Home and abroad weather round-up

The main weather story of last week was the floods on the Mississippi river. I talked about that in my last post. So here's an update on that story: US army engineers have opened the Morganza Spillway which will release 600,000 cubic feet of water every second when all of the gates are opened. Just one bay was  opened on Saturday which realeased10,000 cubic ft of water per second and within 30 mins 100 acres of land were under a foot of water. They opened the spillway in order to protect large cities further down the Mississippi river (e.g. Baton Rouge and New Orleans). US Army Corps of Engineers threatened that if the spillway was not opened, New Orleans could be flooded by 20ft (6m) of water. People in New Orleans are wary of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, and do not want another round of flooding.

An interesting story from the UK is that the dry weather has boosted the asparagus crop enormously. Richard Thomas, who farms in Blidworth, Nottinghamshire has said to the BBC that he has harvested 50 tonnes to date, which is 30 tonnes more than normal. This makes up for the sugar beet crop which was affected by this year's harsh winter which cost Mr. Thomas 21,000 pounds. The dry weather also means that British strawberries are already appearing on the supermarket shelves. However it is also bad news for potato growers because the crop has not been able to grow.


Thank you to my family and friend who are following me. I appreciate it, and I hope you are the first of many.