Ticker for December 15, 2005

                
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December 15, 2005  December 15, 2005  December 15, 2005  December 15, 2005



First Things First

In our haste to reveal a cool product yesterday, the Entire Ticker Staff
forgot to share a few things. So, we want to take this opportunity to
write what we really should've written yesterday.

The cool time series traces now available at
http://climate.mesonet.org/climate_trends.html
were inspired by a couple of conversations with folks from the USDA
Agricultural Research Service Grazinglands Research Laboratory in
El Reno. They had produced similar images for annual precipitation.

The ARS-GRL, among the cool research they generate, is interested in
helping the agricultural community select the most appropriate
varieties of crops and the most appropriate land management practices.
Obviously, when Mother Nature changes the rules and the timing of
climate, this can impact decisions that are made over the course of
years.

And that's where these time-series fit in, and that's why they are tuned
to a five-year cycle, because that's the time-scale in which these
decisions and developments occur.

So, belated thanks goes out to the folks in El Reno.  And we hope they
read this message before they read yesterday's!


Ten Weeks Without Significant Rain

Speaking of El Reno, it is one of a handful of Mesonet sites working
on 70+ days without a quarter-inch of rainfall. The maps on the Ticker
home page paint the picture in a sere assortment of reds and oranges:
http://ticker.mesonet.org/