A Wet Year Causes Farm Woes Far Beyond the Floodplains

The damage from the destructive spring flooding in the Midwest has been followed in parts of the country by a miserable autumn that is making a bad farming year worse, with effects that could be felt into next spring.

Waterlogged, unplanted farm fields near Gardner, Ill., in
May. Record rainfall in the area postponed crop planting,
 and some 19 million acres went unplanted this year.

Even the widespread flooding in the spring was worse for many farmers than the images of sodden river towns would suggest, said Scott Irwin, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois. While the images of overwhelmed levees were dramatic, “that’s not the real story.” Across much of the Midwest and Northern Plains soils were saturated throughout the spring, he said, and many farmers couldn’t get crops in the ground or had to delay planting until perilously late in the season. “Farmers told me in Eastern Illinois it felt like they were in a monsoon from April til May.” 

It was the wettest year on record for the lower 48 states, with the kind of extreme rainfall events that are increasingly associated with climate change. And then fall came in with unseasonably heavy rains and snow. That was the case for Aaron Heley Lehman, a farmer in central Iowa and president of the Iowa Farmer’s Union. “This has definitely been a bad year for almost all farmers in Iowa, even if you weren’t on river bottom ground and having your grain bins explode and your land underwater for weeks and weeks at a time,” he said. “It was still a very rough year.” 

Read the story from The New York Times by John Schwartz - “A Wet Year Causes Farm Woes Far Beyond the Floodplains.”

(The wettest year on record in parts of the U.S. and hitherto unseens droughts in Australia. This, surely, must be the chaotic climate - Robert McLean)

What Is the Heat Index? Is it the Heat, the Humidity, or Both?

A heat wave this week is bringing searing conditions to tens of millions of Americans in a sticky, sweaty swath of the country stretching from Texas up through the Midwest and across to the East Coast.

Floating along the cool Comal River in New Braunfels, Tex., on Thursday.

In an effort to keep people safe, the National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat warning that spans 12 states in the middle of the country, as well as Philadelphia. Cleveland, Pittsburgh and New York are under a heat watch. 

But while temperatures are expected to top 100 in several states, forecasters mostly rely on the heat index — not the old-fashioned thermometer reading — to issue warnings. So what does the number mean?

Read the story from The New York Times by  Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs - “What Is the Heat Index? Is it the Heat, the Humidity, or Both?”

U.S. Midwest Freezes, Australia Burns: This Is the Age of Weather Extremes.

In Chicago, officials warned about the risk of almost instant frostbite on what could be the city’s coldest day ever. Warming centers opened around the Midwest. And schools and universities closed throughout the region as rare polar winds streamed down from the Arctic.

The Lake Michigan shore in Chicago on Tuesday. Overnight
temperatures in the city dipped to minus 21 degrees
Fahrenheit, or minus 29 Celsius, near the record low.

At the same time, on the other side of the planet, wildfires raged in Australia’s record-breaking heat. Soaring air-conditioner use overloaded electrical grids and caused widespread power failures. The authorities slowed and canceled trams to save power. Labor leaders called for laws that would require businesses to close when temperatures reached hazardous levels: nearly 116 degrees Fahrenheit, or 47 Celsius, as was the case last week in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia.

This is weather in the age of extremes. It comes on top of multiple extremes, all kinds, in all kinds of places.

Read the story from The New York Times by Somini Songupta - “U.S. Midwest Freezes, Australia Burns: This Is the Age of Weather Extremes.”

Wisconsin’s flood are catastrophic and only getting worse

AN ENTIRE SUMMER’S worth of rain has fallen across a broad swath of the Midwest in recent days. The resulting record floods have wrecked homes and altered the paths of rivers, in one case destroying a waterfall in Minnesota. The worst-affected region, southwest Wisconsin, has received more than 20 inches of rain in 15 days– more than it usually gets in six months.

Wisconsin's floods are catastrophic and getting worse.

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin declared a statewide emergency last week, mobilizing the Wisconsin National Guard to assist flood victims if necessary. The Kickapoo River in southwest Wisconsin rose to record levels — as high as six feet above the previous high water mark — producing damage that local emergency management officials described as “breathtaking.”

Read the story by Eric Hothaus from Wired - “Wisconsin’s flood are catastrophic and only getting worse.”