By Robert Burns, Texas AgriLife10 May 2011 Crop and forage production has “pretty much shut down” due to severe to exceptional drought conditions, said a Texas AgriLife Extension Service statewide crop expert. “If you look at the U.S. drought monitor, about 26 percent of the state of Texas is an exceptional drought,” said Dr. Travis […]
By JAKE WHITTENBERG, KING 5 News10 May 2011 WHATCOM COUNTY, Wash. – Our La Niña winter is starting to show its affect on area crops. Berry farmers in Whatcom and Skagit Counties are struggling to deal with unusually cold and wet weather. Some berry farmers report being about three weeks behind on their harvest. “We […]
By WILLIAM NEUMAN12 April 2011 When prices for corn and soybeans surged last fall, Bill Hammitt, a farmer in the fertile hill country of western Iowa, began to see the bulldozers come out, clearing steep hillsides of trees and pastureland to make way for more acres of the state’s staple crops. Now, as spring planting […]
By Ben Raines, Press-Register 8 May 2011 DAUPHIN ISLAND, Ala. – Tarballs linger on Alabama’s uninhabited beaches, clustering around the edges of sand dunes and sticking to seashells and driftwood. The public beaches of Orange Beach, Gulf Shores and Dauphin Island received deep cleanings over the winter and are still monitored daily. But the more […]
May 9 (Reuters) – U.S. home values fell in the first quarter at the fastest rate since late 2008, real estate data firm Zillow said on Monday, suggesting that a bottom will not be seen until 2012 at the earliest. Zillow said its home value index fell 3 percent in the first three months of […]
1. Record Breaking Mississippi River Levels Cause Levee Demo The Big Muddy rolled relentlessly southward, causing havoc as the record flood level drove citizens from their homes. Although the Army Corps of Engineers was forced to dynamite the levees to save Cairo, IL, the disaster is a movable catastrophe. 2. Tornado Attack in the South […]
By Matthew Yglesias5 May 2011 Something that I think drives at least some of my disagreements with other liberals about education policy is that I think a lot of middle class liberals implicitly underestimate the extent of really bad learning outcomes. Take this report (PDF) from the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund which notes “that 47% […]
Baltimore MD (SPX) May 04, 2011 – Global climate change is anticipated to bring more extreme weather phenomena such as heat waves that could impact human health in the coming decades. An analysis led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health calculated that the city of Chicago could experience between 166 […]
By Jeff MastersMay 05, 2011 The largest tornado outbreak and greatest one-day total for tornadoes in history occurred during last week’s historic super tornado outbreak, said NOAA in a press release on Wednesday. They estimate 190 tornadoes touched down during the 24-hour period from 8:00 a.m. EDT April 27 to 8:00 a.m. EDT April 28 […]
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE3 May 2011 BOISE CITY, Okla. — While tornadoes and floods have ravaged the South and the Midwest, the remote western edge of the Oklahoma Panhandle is quietly enduring a weather calamity of its own: its longest drought on record, even worse than the Dust Bowl, when incessant winds scooped up the […]