FORECAST DISCUSSION: Friday, June 7 - ***** BAD NEWS for the Ohio Valley and East Coast this weekend.......First serious threat to growers in the Carolinas!! *****
Two weather phenomena will combine to create very favorable conditions for blue mold development in the Ohio Valley and SE U.S. for the next three to five days. A stationary front now stretching from the southern Great Lakes southwestward into AR/TX will move very slowly to the east. At the altitude of guiding winds, a cool whirlpool of air is getting separated from the main jet-stream current; this is called a "cut-off" low. The cool air in the upper levels provides constant instability in the atmosphere. The stationary front at the surface provides a focal point for clashing air masses. Result? Persistent cloudiness, off-and-on showers/t'storms, and relatively cool temperatures will occur near the front. Other locations in the muggy air east of the front will be partly to mostly cloudy with a chance of afternoon and evening showers or storms. The unsettled conditions are already present in the Ohio Valley and deep SE, and will be moving into the Carolinas sometime Saturday. Unfortunately, every extended forecast calls for clouds and showers through the middle of next week!!
The Cuban and S TX sources appear to be little threat, though there may be some localized disease development in S TX associated with recent rainfall. Yesterday, spores were probably deposited in SE Indiana, SW Ohio, or N KY (from the W central KY sources) and in E Ohio, W PA, W NY, or S Canada (from the E central KY sources). Farms along the forecast pathways from the Kentucky sources will be at moderate to high risk for at least the next several days. The danger from the north Florida and Georgia sources, now locally moderate and low elsewhere, will escalate to the level of the Kentucky sources as the weekend progresses. These sources will seriously threaten growers in the Carolinas by Sunday.
There is ONE piece of good news. Dr. William Nesmith, Extension Specialist in Plant Pathology at UK, reports that the general activity level is low in all of the disease areas. Let's hope we can still say that two weeks from now. TK
HIGH-RISK SOURCES: Elizabethtown and Cythiana, KY; Hortense, GA; N Florida.
Web page last updated by Thomas Keever on 7 June 1996.