SNR in the News: December

Wildfires in the Southeast had media outlets picking up the phone to talk with experts from the National Drought Mitigation Center. Also in the news this month: Al Dutcher with the Nebraska State Climate Office and David Wishart, geography professor housed in SNR.

• Wildfires in drought-plagued areas of the country had media outlets reaching out to the National Drought Mitigation Center’s Director Mark Svoboda. Lack of adequate rain has the Southeast resulted in drier timber, which literally fueled the fires, Popular Science reported. After some brief rains in Georgia and Alabama, Fox and ABC news outlets also picked up the thread on drought and wildfires, and they ran stories of their own. Newspapers as far east as Tennessee ran interviews with Svoboda through mid-December.
  
  
• The Wall Street Journal also reported on the wildfires spreading through the Southeast and referenced the weekly release of the U.S. Drought Monitor, produced in part by the National Drought Mitigation Center, the creators of the well-known map.
  
  
• On Dec. 8, Al Dutcher, extension climatologist with the Nebraska State Climate Office at the School of Natural Resources, gave a 2017 weather outlook to Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce. The Columbus Telegram highlighted that forecast in their daily edition. Dutcher also got mention in the Aurora News Register for his forecast given at the Upper Big Blue Natural Resource District annual Crop-Tip event.
  
  
• CropWatch, a Nebraska Extension publication, reported on the launch of a quarterly newsletter, the Climate Dispatch, by the Nebraska State Climate Office.
  
  
• The latest book by David Wishart, geographer with the School of Natural Resources, drew the attention of the Omaha World Herald. The newspaper ran a column on the slim volume, “Great Plains Indians,” a collaboration between the Center for Great Plains Studies and the University of Nebraska Press. The Herald called the book “a noteworthy contribution to Great Plains knowledge by this respected Nebraska scholar.”