WEATHER BY THE NUMBERS

* 17.26 inches is the 2007 Huntsville rain deficit as of today. They have only received 10.5 inches since New Year’s Day. Last year at this time, they had received 19.80 inches.

* 101 was the high at Montgomery Airport (Dannelly Field) yesterday. However, NWS coop observers, which are also official, reported 97 in Montgomery, 96 in Clanton and Livingston and 95 in Selma.

* 9 is the number of states from the Central Plains into the Upper Midwest that are covered by a moderate to high risk of severe weather this afternoon and tonight. It could be a major outbreak. The high risk states are Eastern Iowa, extreme NW Illinois, all of Wisconsin and the west part of Upper Michigan. The moderate risk extends southward as far as Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Remember, it was back on March 1 when almost all of Alabama was designated as high risk. We all know what happened on that day in Enterprise and also in Wilcox County.

* 5 tornadoes were reported yesterday: 1 in NE Wyoming, 3 in South Dakota and 1 in Nebraska. There were numerous reports of tornadoes on the ground in the general vicinity of Gillette, Wyoming. Gillette is located out on the plains of NE Wyoming on I-90.

* 14 inches of snow fell overnight at Alta in the Wasatch Mountains of North Utah. In the same general area, Snowbird received 10 inches.

* 105 was the hottest in the USA yesterday at Wink and Laredo, Texas.

* 27 was the coldest this morning at Lake Tahoe (not counting Alaska).

* 2 inches is how much rain fell at Layton, Utah in the last 24 hours. That is just south of Ogden. One of our daily readers, Matt Marshall, reported it was a long drawn out rain with the temperature steady at 43 degrees.

* 4 inches is how much rain fell at the 8,000-foot level at Farmington, Utah. This was an awesome storm producing a lot of rain over several states and in a region that just doesn’t get much rain.

* 6 to 10 inches is how much snow was expected in the higher mountains of Yellowstone National Park before it finally ended this morning.

* 69,900 is how many bales of cotton harvested in Madison County in 2006. That makes that extreme North Alabama county the largest cotton producer in the state. Remember a striking photograph years ago showing an upright missile near Huntsville photographed across a cotton field ready for harvest in the foreground. Undoubtedly, the 2007 drought is going to cut down on the production quite a bit.

* 64,200 bales of cotton harvested in Limestone County in 2006 made it the second largest producer.

* 54,500 acres of land in the state were planted in cotton in 2006.

* 10 is the ranking of Alabama nationally in cotton production. Texas is number one.

All of this neat agriculture information comes from the USDA Alabama Field Office in Montgomery.

* 28.97 inches was the barometric pressure at Fargo, North Dakota and Moorehead, Minnesota at midday. That shows you how intense that low-pressure system is that continues to move toward the NE.

* 1.66 inches is all the rain that has fallen on Los Angeles this year. Normal as of today is 9.42 inches.

* 2.63 inches is all they have had since July 1, 2006. (That is almost a full year!) That region of Southern California is under all kinds of severe water restrictions.

* 12 is how many minutes that I have not had a sip of coffee. I have to bail out of this and head to the kitchen to solve that problem.

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