The earth’s position and movement around the sun welcomed the spring equinox on March 19th, and meteorologists in the northern hemisphere welcomed spring on March 1st. Unfortunately, the atmosphere – particularly over the midwestern and Great Lakes states – refused to acknowledge those dates to offer us a more traditional spring. Sure, Indiana’s spring 2020[Read More…]
Climate and Weather
The initial cool wave of September is likely over as we welcome warmer temperatures for the next several weeks. The Climate Prediction Center is showing strong confidence for above-normal temperatures through September 24rd, which should help accumulate growing degree days and move agricultural production further along. Outlooks are showing significant probabilities for above-normal precipitation over[Read More…]
The big story this week was the much-needed rain throughout most of Indiana that fell on Monday (August 19th). Since August 15th, this brought up to 5” of precipitation throughout west-central, southwest, and northwest Indiana. This was 2”-4” above normal for the past 2 weeks! However, as we transition into September and hope temperatures stay[Read More…]
Even the climate models are confused by this year’s weather. When the August monthly outlook was released (July 31st; national Climate Prediction Center) it showed significant confidence that August would have below-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation. However, the shorter-range outlooks (that update daily) the last few days, seem to contradict that prediction. Whether it is[Read More…]
8/1/2019 Beth Hall, PhD Director, Indiana State Climate Office The brief rain event earlier this week brought some precipitation to the state (Figure). However, the drier regions of the north could use more rain soon! Sadly, significant amounts of rain do not appear to be in the forecast for the next 7 days. Keep an[Read More…]
7/18/2019 Beth Hall, PhD Director, Indiana State Climate Office While the remnants of Hurricane Barry brought some much-needed precipitation to the state, the next few weeks look to be on the dry side. Temperatures are also expected to be warmer than normal, so heat stress may become an issue for plants and animals. The Midwestern[Read More…]
6/20/2019 Some weeks I wonder if I could just re-use the previous week’s weather and climate article! The story seems to be the same: It’s been wet and more rain is expected. It is impressive, however, astounded when to see the contrast in June precipitation (so far) for precipitation across the state. It seems plenty[Read More…]
06/03/2019 As we close the doors on May for the year, one of the biggest stories throughout the month was the precipitation. The entire state was above normal. Northwestern Indiana was 3.41” above normal and southeastern Indiana was 0.18” above normal for the month (Figure 1). Temperatures were near normal in the northern and above[Read More…]
So far for the month of May, temperatures across the state vary by nearly 2˚F above normal in the southeast and almost 3˚F below normal in the extreme northwest. Similarly, the same trends can be seen in the Modified Growing Degree Days as they are based on temperature (Fig 1). The main story continues to[Read More…]
5/9/2019 The biggest topic seems to be how wet it is and how much more rain Indiana can expect. So far, May has experienced near-normal precipitation throughout the central part of the state with 0.5”-2” in southern and northern regions (Figure 1). Combining this with April’s precipitation, however, means the soil moisture is still 60mm[Read More…]