Wettest year on record in Philadelphia; 2011 sets record for wet/dry extremes in U.S.
This year is now the wettest year in nearly 200 years of record keeping in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A large, wet low pressure system soaked the Northeast U.S. on Wednesday and early Thursday, bringing 2.31 inches of rain to the City of Brotherly Love, bringing this year's precipitation total in Philly to 62.26 inches. This breaks the old yearly precipitation record of 61.20 inches, set in 1867. In a normal year, Philadelphia receives about 40 inches. According to wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt, this is one of the most difficult U.S. city records to break, since rainfall records in Philadelphia go back to 1820. The only other sites with a longer continuous precipitation record in the U.S. are Charleston, SC (1738 -) and New Bedford, MA (1816 -).
Figure 1. Departure of precipitation from average for 2011, as of December 6, 2011. Image credit: NOAA/HPC.
20+ inches above average precipitation in Ohio Valley, Northeast
Philadelphia is not alone in setting a wettest year in recorded history mark in 2011. Over a dozen major cities in the Ohio Valley and Northeast have set a new wettest year record, or are close to doing so. Thanks to rains associated with this year's tremendous tornado outbreaks in April in May, plus exceptionally heavy summer thunderstorm rains, combined with rains from Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Irene, portions of at least twelve states have seen rains more than twenty inches above average during 2011.
The fraction of the country covered by extremely wet conditions (top 10% historically) was 32% during the period January through November, ranking as the 2nd highest such coverage in the past 100 years. And if you weren't washing away in a flood, you were baking in a drought in 2011--portions of sixteen states had precipitation more than twenty inches below average (Figure 1.) The fraction of the country covered by extremely dry conditions (top 10% historically) was 22% during the period January through November, ranking as the 8th highest in the past 100 years. The combined fraction of the country experiencing either severe drought or extremely wet conditions was 56% averaged over the January - November period--the highest in a century of record keeping. Climate change science predicts that if the Earth continues to warm as expected, wet areas will tend to get wetter, and dry areas will tend to get drier--so this year's side-by-side extremes of very wet and very dry conditions should grow increasingly common in the coming decades.
Figure 2. Percentage of the contiguous U.S. either in severe or greater drought (top 10% dryness) or extremely wet (top 10% wetness) during the period January - November, as computed using NOAA's Climate Extremes Index. Remarkably, more than half of the country (56%) experienced either a top-ten driest or top-ten wettest year, a new record. Image credit: NOAA/NCDC.
Unofficial state yearly precipitation record set in Ohio
The Wilmington, Ohio NWS office announced last week that three stations in Southwest Ohio had unofficially broken the 140-year old state yearly precipitation record. Cheviot, Miamitown, and Fernbank have recorded 73.81", 71.89", and 70.85", respectively so far in 2011, beating the old record of 70.82" set at Little Mountain in 1870. According to wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt, the old record should be 72.08” at Mt. Healthy, Ohio in 1880.
Wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt summarizes the global weather extremes in November in his latest post.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Jeff doesn't pull your comments. There are others here that do that.
yeah, im sure of that. i know a few. they think that im talking 'religious' and dont want to hear the truth. but, i have done my part and let the Lord handle it. funny how #288 was removed for violating community standards, and was a simple reply to another member. evidently somebody on here is screwed. oh well then, cuz i can post anything #2 time! :D
How bout a deep-south snowstorm?
I don't see that happening but the coldest air of the season maybe coming next weekend for the SE US.
Look at his username. I think he may be the troll.... And besides, how does someone with that join date know about JFV and Jason? They haven't been on here trolling in months....
Seriously?
Rule #1 of the Rules of the Road:
Keep it civil. Personal attacks, bickering, flaming, and general trollish behavior will not be tolerated.
Thank you! Some people have lots of hate in them.
It's an old member circumventing a ban--the same person to whom you replied, and the author of 321. Do what you'd like, but I don't even bother responding; I just report and ignore, as the man says...
The ECMWF has a totally different pattern at 240 hours than either the Canadian or GFS. I've noticed this a few times recently where the GFS tries to break the subtropical ridge too much in the extended time frame. At some point the pattern will break, but the ECMWF probably has a better track record in the past month or so. Let's see if in the coming days the ECMWF trends towards the GFS, or vice-versa. Still pretty far out in time.
The GFS ensemble mean shows a ridge in the west and a trough central and east, but the magnitude is highly in question right now.
Adrian
Great post Adrian. I agree with you but that is some serious cold wx blanketing most of Asia right now and it's just a matter of time before that cold works it's way over to the US.
I once asked Jeff why one of my comments was pulled. He was not aware of it and I had to explain what my comment contained. He said he was not sure why my comment was pulled and other similar comments by others were not. I told him that I did not care if others' comments were not pulled. I just wanted to know what triggered my comment getting pulled. In other words, Jeff is not behind all comments being pulled.
Dodabear has been a member longer than some of you have been alive...
14:54 GMT le 14 décembre 2011
I rarely delete comments and ban users, it is true, but I will do so in obvious troll cases. We have several admins that I leave the banning/deleting to.
Jeff Masters
Global warming is melting the polar ice caps, robbing polar bears of the ice floes they need to hunt prey. As the annual sea ice melts, polar bears are forced ashore to spend their summers fasting. If the Arctic ice cap continues to melt sooner and form later, polar bears will become too thin to reproduce and they will become extinct by the end of this century.
The polar bear's home – the Arctic – is experiencing the effects of global warming more than any other place. Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at almost twice the rate of that of the rest of the world, and this is threatening to place the entire Arctic ecosystem in jeopardy.
Arctic sea ice is shrinking by what appears to be a greater rate every year – sea ice that not only provides hunting ground for polar bears, but shelter and transportation for seals, walrus, arctic foxes, and the Inuit people. The underside provides a surface for algae that support cod, char, beluga, and narwhal. The white sea ice also has a cooling effect on climate by reflecting light away from Earth's surface. As it melts, the global warming advances even more quickly.
StormTracker, you and I don't agree on everything, but I find a lot of the maps and satellite photos you post very useful. As long as everyone gets their say on things like AGW without making a bunch of ad hominem attacks, I'm happy. All you youngsters here on the blog will find out who's right. I guess us old geezers will too, just from a different place.
This high over the Southeast has been really strong, exceptionally so for down here. The barometer last night was 30.52, something I expect to see in places like Colorado. It's down to 30.43 this morning, so I'm hoping this front approaching from the west will finally get the high moving.
Really high pressure gets the arthritis in my neck started (another thing you kiddies will find about, along AGW) and I've had a weird upper respiratory infection for the past week. Coughed up about two and half lungs but no other symptoms except general body aches and pains and a good case of laryngitis. It's clearly some sort of virus and seems to be getting better, but hope you folks don't get it for Christmas. No real cold air on the horizon for us, so I don't think we'll have a white Christmas. As long as we don't get any New Year's tornados, that will be just fine by me. ;)
old geezers RULE!!! my grandfather knows just bout everything about farming and farm equipment there is to know, lol
High of -10C while a low of 0C. Gonna be a fun day. :P
Well actually, in this case Environment Canada uses the low temperature as the highest temperature at night and the highs as the lowest temperature during the day.
Last time this happened we had a flash freeze day and so no school! :D I'm kinda hoping that this happens again.
They do a very poor job of that decision making Dr. Masters IMO! You might want to evaluate the process. Just my opinion tho!
Aussie, interesting video. I really think one of the main goals should be to reduce the number of false warnings. We'd always have to go down and clear the beach for every warning and, except for a two or three inch rise in ocean level, nothing would happen. That made it much harder to convince to people to get off the beach next time, and we only have a relatively small number of deputies and park rangers for over 100 miles of coastline. We have one area in Sonoma County, CA, where the Russian River meets the Pacific. It's one of the most popular beaches and it's packed on weekends. The trouble is that geologists tell us that, given the offshore topgraphy, the delta area would be subject to a 20-22 foot tsunami under the right conditions. We do our best to clear the area, but everyone just goes back in behind us. If we had to do this less often, and could tell people there was a high probability they'd be killed if they stayed there, that would really help. Right now, no one believes they are in any real danger and we are just being annoying.
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