Interesting fact about the drought.

[007]

This is a C&P from MC.

.speaking of the drought
anthony yanez, the morning weather guy on channel 2, mentioned an interesting factoid on his newscast this morning.

NOAA did a study of droughts using tree ring data and found that, since 1550, only in the year 1789 has our area suffered a more severe drought than the one we're having now.

in other words, the year of 2011 has been the second driest year in 461 years.

in case you're wondering, the dryer the season, the closer a tree rings are together. the wetter the season, the farther apart a tree's rings are.

i thought that was interesting. i like yanez. he's an underrated weatherman.

[lurefisher]

Wow that is pretty cool Mike !

[Hogie70]

Thanks for the info Mike...

[corndog]

Makes me thirsty reading that Mike!! We need some rain!!!!

[Big Game 57]

Great info, Thanks for the post!

[Robalo]

Al Gore was right! Naw, no way, just a freak year.

[nokatchin]

interesting,thanks for posting

[Oleander Kayaker]

Al Gore was right! Naw, no way, just a freak year.

Agree. This correlates with activity on the Sun, which is the main driver of the Earth's climate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunspot_Numbers.png

If you look at the Dalton Minimum, 1789 was in a sunspot decline. Lately, solar scientists are predicting a lesser 11 year sunspot max, like what occured in the 1800-1810 range.

Here's an article that my wife uses in her HCC class:

http://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/julie.janzer/govt2302/assignments/assignment-two-and-associated-articles/article-climategate-how-to-hide-the-sun/view

[Robalo]

Thanks Oleander-cool stuff.