Weather By The Numbers 5/19/08

| May 19, 2008 @ 7:27 pm | 3 Replies

* 79% is how much of Alabama has adequate top soil moisture, quite a change from a year ago at this time. These numbers courtesy the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Alabama Field Office, Montgomery, released this afternoon. They issue a Crop Progress and Condition Report each Monday afternoon.

* 2% is all of the state that has very short top soil moisture!

* 90% of Alabama’s wheat crop is in good to excellent condition–a huge improvement over last year at this time.

* 70% of the pasture land is in good to excellent condition thanks to timely rain events.

* 10.4% was all of Alabama that was in an extreme drought designation last week (May 13) according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

* 51% was under an extreme drought a year ago at this time. That shows a tremendous improvement.

* 96 was the temperature at Bend, Oregon late this afternoon as an unusual early season heat pattern affects the West.

* 113 was the late afternoon temperature at both Needles, California and Bullhead City, Arizona in the Arizona/California Desert.

* 5% was the relative humidity in both those places.

* 110 was the late afternoon temperature (Alabama time) at Palm Springs, California. All of these desert locations will heat up several more degrees before the afternoon is over. We will not get a report from Death Valley, California until later this evening. They are probably several degrees hotter.

* 104 was the temperature in St. George, Utah. That weather station is one of the hottest places in Utah. It is in the desert in the SW part of the state on I-15. Not too far away to the north is Cedar City which is much cooler because of its higher elevation.

* 106 was the Las Vegas temperature with a humidity of only 5%.

* 111 was the temperature at Goodyear, Arizona (that is a Phoenix suburb). It was 109 at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix.

* 98 was the high temperature in Birmingham on this date in 1962, as we had an incredibly hot early season heat wave. The average high temperature for May in Birmingham is 84, but in that May of 1962 it averaged 92.3 degrees. 23 days had highs in the 90s in that exceptionally hot May.

* 0.04 is all the rain that Birmingham got during the first 28 days of that May in 1962.

I will post a more general story about May 1962 at some point tomorrow.

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