Lake Lanier, the water source that serves a third of Georgia's residents, only has a 4 month's supply of water. Forecasters predict the drought could last months, and residents should look for news ways to conserve.

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin says, the city has cut water use by not watering parks. She says maintaining water supplies for drinking and fighting fires is the primary concern. Atlanta commissioner for the Department of Watershed Management, Rob Hunter says Lake Lanier has a 121 day supply of water. He says reducing consumption is key. He offered residents several suggestions: take shorter showers, repair leaky faucets and pipes, and cut outdoor water usage. [More]

Labels: physics, science, weather

If enough people did not take up the exit grants, further increases to the asset test could be made, he said.

University of Adelaide water expert Mike Young said measures to assist farmers move off the land represented a significant shift in attitudes to primary production.

"An important signal is being sent to everybody to make them think about whether or not it is appropriate to remain in agriculture," he said.

"We're now trying to farm and irrigate in a drier regime. A lot of the practices that have been in place won't work in the future unless it rains again."

James Stacey, a dairy farmer from Langhorne Creek in South Australia, said the asset limit was unrealistic for farmers in the Murray-Darling Basin who might want the exit grants but had valuable water licenses putting them above the $350,000 mark.

"I think a lot of people along the Murray system would think about it seriously, and that includes dairy farmers from NSW, Victoria and South Australia," he said. "The problem is, everyone is asset rich and cash poor."

Mr Stacey, who has applied for an exceptional circumstances interest rate subsidy, has been forced to sell his calves born this year because of high feed costs. [More]

Labels: international, weather

More rain and snow is falling in Canada, Britain and northern Europe, two-thirds of which is attributable to human activities. Britain is suffering one of its wettest summers ever, with severe flooding in England. More rain is also falling in areas immediately south of the equator including Brazil, southern Africa, Indonesia and Australia. Nearly all of this is caused by mankind. But countries immediately north of the equator, in Africa, India and parts of China, are getting less water. [More]

While sidewalks crackle in the summer heat, NASA scientists are keeping a close eye on the sun. It is almost spotless, a sign that the Sun may have reached solar minimum. Scientists are now watching for the first spot of the new solar cycle to appear. The 11 year long solar cycle is marked by two extremes, solar minimum and solar maximum. Solar minimum is the period of least solar activity in the solar cycle of the sun. During this time sunspot and solar flare activity diminishes, and often does not occur for days at a time. [More]

Though hurricane season begins on June 1, the stormiest months tend to be August and September, when conditions in the Atlantic basin are most ripe for a hurricane to develop. During these months, ocean temperatures are warmer and there is typically less wind in the upper atmosphere to shear the tops off of developing storms.

Some seasons have seen unusually late starts. The 1992 season, for example, didn’t start up until August. And boy did it start with a bang: Hurricane Andrew decimated South Florida. [More]

Labels: marketing, weather

The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season should have above-average activity, with three major hurricanes and a good chance at least one of them will make landfall, a top hurricane researcher said Friday. [More]

Not bad at all. In general, the predictions fall within a storm or two of the observed totals. Last season, though, the forecasters had a bad year. 2004's six intense hurricanes doubled most predictions. The seasonal total of nine hurricanes was also significantly higher than expected. Forecasters blamed the poor predictions on a "year [that] did not behave like any other year we have studied." [More]

The problem is not Gray's age -- we all revered Henry Stommel who did some of his finest work in his seventies. The problem is Gray's failure to adapt to a modern era of meteorology, which demands hypotheses soundly grounded in quantitative and consistent physical formulations, not seat-of-the-pants flying. The WSJ also made much of the withdrawal of an invitation for Gray to join a debate on hurricane trends at an Atlanta tropical meteorology conference. We can't speak for the organizers, but we find it easy to believe that their decision was guided more by the invalidity of Gray's scientific reasoning than by any political or personal considerations. [More]

Labels: global warming, weather

"Our increasingly technologically dependent society is becoming increasingly vulnerable to space weather," David L. Johnson, director of the National Weather Service, said at a briefing.

GPS receivers have become widely used in recent years, using satellite signals in navigating airplanes, ships and automobiles, and in using cell phones, mining, surveying and many other commercial uses. [More]

Labels: technology, weather