North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

I don't think Accuweather will mind too much if you all read their article, 
it's online for free anyway.  Im certainly glad to see SOMEONE in 
meteorology referring to long term patterns that repeat.  I have heard none 
of them refer to a 22 year drought cycle or how much our weather is acting 
like it did 22 years ago.  We had drought and extreme heat that we still 
remember and shudder.  Mind you, the peak of it was not till the 4th year, 
when the Bermuda High had moved from over Atlanta to St Louis and was baking 
the corn crop, THEN the media noticed and the meteorologists actually talked 
about it instead of just the usual prediction of "a 20% chance of rain 
today".  That was what they usually said when there was no chance at all.  I 
notice they have stopped that, if they don't expect rain they don't mention 
a chance at all. Anyway, in 1988 it got to 100 every single day for an 
entire month.  There was no cloud cover to mitigate the baking sun, no 
relief.  I remember escaping to Florida in summer 88 (escaping a heat wave 
by going to Florida, now that would be a joke most years).  Driving around 
in an un air-conditioned pickup looking for a place to camp for the night, 
it was 10 pm in central GA and 100 degrees.  About the level of Savannah we 
drove out from under a brown cloud, the edge of the standing high that kept 
our hot dirty used air spinning overhead.  Going home, we drove back under 
it.
   I estimated that 1/4 of the forest trees on our southfacing slope were 
dead by the end of that summer.   There were a dozen dry ponds within a mile 
of us.  There were big trees along the highways standing there dead, just 
dead with brown leaves or needles.  The foresters said they didn't die from 
the drought, no, they died from disease.  Only later did they admit that 
drought stressed trees are more likely to die of disease, same as people in 
famines tend to die of measles or other epidemics.  There was a weird gray 
flat fungus that grew on many young oak trees, you'd see it after the tree 
died and bark started falling off.  I don't know about the rest of you, I 
know that some local people are doing better because they got cloudbursts we 
missed, but we have had right at 1" of rain for May and no rain in sight the 
rest of the month.  This follows a March with under 1/2" total rainfall and 
Jan, Feb and April with about 3" rain each month, nothing big to replenish 
the water table or saturate the ground.     Donna


A Long, Hot Summer is On the Way
"Air Conditioners will be Getting a Workout," Says AccuWeather.com's
Bastardi

STATE COLLEGE, PA, May 16, 2007 - AccuWeather.com Chief Long-Range
Forecaster Joe Bastardi and his team expect this summer to be hotter than
normal across a large part of the nation, including the most heavily
populated areas of the Northeast. While a broad swath of the country will
experience close to average levels of precipitation from June through
August, the Southwest and Rockies will see below-normal rainfall, continuing
the threat of wildfires in the region. The Southeast, already contending
with raging wildfires, will likely see little relief until tropical storms
and hurricanes bring moisture as the season progresses.

Said AccuWeather.com Director of Forecast Operations Ken Reeves, "Whenever
you start talking about a hotter-than-average summer in the Northeast,
especially the middle and late summer, you have to consider the hit that
consumers will take to their wallets and pocketbooks as they are forced to
cool their homes and businesses longer and more often." Reeves added that
effects on consumers would be muted should energy prices fall.

It is in the second half of the summer that most of the Northeast, the Great
Lakes region, and the Midwest will experience the warmest temperatures
relative to normal. Texas will be one of the few exceptions to a
hotter-than-normal summer.

Bastardi and his team are basing the AccuWeather.com Summer Forecast in part
on parallels they see to conditions that existed in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.
"During that time, torrid heat waves were common across the United States,
and hurricanes attacked our coasts more frequently," he said.

"There is a very impressive resume of nasty weather events that occur
whenever we see a transition from warmer than normal waters in the tropical
Pacific to near normal or even cooler ocean temperatures, such as we're
seeing now," added Bastardi. "The overwhelming majority of these events are
hurricanes or extreme heat and, in about half of the years, both cause major
disruptions."

While some may be quick to ascribe this summer's potentially extreme weather
conditions to global warming, Bastardi warns against this. "The weather
events that occur in individual seasons don't provide conclusive proof of
global warming," he said. "Also, conditions this summer will be similar to
the summers of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and no one attributes the severe
weather that occurred then to human-induced global warming, particularly
since we entered a period of cooler temperatures soon thereafter."

As for the summer's precipitation forecast, Bastardi detailed that most of
the nation will experience near-normal rainfall, other than the
wildfire-prone Southwest and the Rockies. The Great Lakes area, Texas, and
peninsular Florida are projected to receive above-normal levels of
precipitation.

Said Bastardi, "While the Southeast will experience close-to-average
rainfall amounts, we don't expect any significant relief from the ongoing
drought until hurricanes and tropical storms bring additional moisture later
in the summer. Though, of course, when you're talking about the possibility
of hurricane strikes, that arrival of moisture is a double-edged sword."

Bastardi pointed out that the Southeast is the prime target for this year's
hurricanes, as detailed in the AccuWeather.com Hurricane Season Forecast
released on May 8, 2007.