Ed Oswald: Welcome to the Weather Whys Podcast, I'm your host Ed Oswald
from The Weather Station Experts.
In this episode, we'll take a look at this year's crazy weather and
why 2024 will start just as crazy.
I'm glad you could join us, let's get started.
Again, thanks so much for joining us.
This is The Weather Whys Podcast Episode 1, our first “official” episode.
With the end of the year coinciding with the first episode of our
podcast, we thought it logical to start out with a year in review.
And what a year it was weatherwise.
If you were out west, you'll remember this sound from last winter:
Rain, and lots of it, fell across much of the Southwest to start the
year, even New York city by years end had its most rainfall in a day ever.
But much of the year it felt like the world was on fire,
with record breaking heat.
Researchers believe the three warmest days in the past 150,000 years happened
this summer, spurring a wildfire season that was unprecedented in
the number of Americans it affected.
While California's rainy winter kept their fire season to a minimum, unusually
dry weather across Hawaii and Eastern Canada spurred massive wildfires.
Thick wildfire smoke choked off major Eastern us cities affecting
millions, but this list is just a small part of what happened.
Worldwide, 2023 will be the hottest year ever.
So what drove all this craziness?
El Niño.
For years, we have been dealing with La Niña, which are cooler than normal
waters in the equatorial Pacific ocean.
While La Niña brings her own set of wild weather, it's far less
severe, and far less widespread.
El Niño is the opposite, where the equatorial Pacific
waters are warmer than normal.
The 2023 event is what's called a “super El Niño,” meaning water
temperatures are much warmer.
. And although we're drastically simplifying it, warmer waters make it
easier for water to evaporate, which in turn puts more water vapor in the air.
This is partially the reason for many of the extreme rainfall
events we've seen worldwide.
On the flip side, this excess rain must be balanced out
with excess dryness elsewhere.
El Niños are infamous for widespread heat and drought as well.
And then on top of this, there's climate change.
The world has already warmed at nearly a degree Celsius since the 1960s.
The 2023 El Niño added a half degree on top of that.
The result was a preview of a world where 1.5 degrees of warming isn't
a record, but a daily reality.
while this El Niño event may be peaking, weather patterns
will continue to be affected.
As winter arrives in the Northern Hemisphere, summer begins in the south.
This El Niño event didn't start until April, so the Southern Hemisphere
has yet to have its El Niño summer.
Summer will coincide with peak strength, so the effects will likely be significant.
Australia experiences extreme heat and drought during El Niños, often
accompanied by significant wildfires, but we'll save that for a future episode.
So what were the five biggest weather events of this crazy year?
We'll have more about that after the break.
The Weather Whys Podcast is brought to you by The Weather Station Experts.
A home weather station is a great way to expand your weather knowledge, and The
Weather Station Experts has real hands-on reviews so you can make the right choice.
Visit us on the web at theweatherstationexperts.com.
Thanks for staying with us.
As I said before the break, we're counting down the biggest
weather stories of the year.
Starting out in January, the atmospheric river events in California
certainly belong on our list.
I'm not going to spend too much time on this as its subject of our next
episode, but California's years long drought ended in spectacular fashion.
This certainly was the big news story for the beginning of 2023.
Although it started in December, as late as March portions of California were
still dealing with heavy rains and snows.
But while rainy weather is normal in California during the winter,
elsewhere winter was anything but.
Some Northeast cities saw little of any measurable snowfall, with
temperatures averaging well above normal.
In fact, Philadelphia went an entire winter without more than one inch of
snow in a single snow storm, a streak that now has lasted nearly two years.
Here at our weather station, the average winter high was 47 degrees.
While that might seem cold to some of you, it's well above normal
here by about five degrees or so.
The weather did calm down a bit during the spring.
However, things began to dry out and we began watching a flash drought spread
across the Northeast and Eastern Canada.
Flash droughts occur when weather patterns get "stuck," causing an area to receive
an extended period of little rainfall.
That was the case here.
We received just .22" of rain in May and a little over an inch in June, continuing
a dry start to the year partially due to the rainy weather out west.
This set the stage for a memorable event in June for much of the Northeast.
The same dry conditions in the Northeast were occurring in Eastern
Canada as well, but much more severe.
By late spring, tens of thousands of acres of Canadian forest
were burning out of control.
An unusually strong cold front swept across the Northeast in
the first part of the month.
Instead of just cool, dry air.
These Northeast winds also brought the smoke behind it so
thick that it rolled in like fog.
Smoke filled the air in New York City, and skyscrapers
disappeared into the thick haze.
Here in Pennsylvania, it wasn't much better: for two days straight smoke
was in the air thick enough that you could even see it inside the house.
But the summer had more in store.
By July, sea surface temperatures in the Florida keys rose above 100
degrees for the first time in recorded history after weeks of relentless
heat and little rain, and this is at a time when afternoon thunderstorms
are typically a daily occurrence.
These warm waters made rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones a constant
risk, some in places you wouldn't expect.
Even in the Eastern Pacific water temperatures were running much
above normal, and that set the stage for a tropical storm in Southern
California of all places in August.
Listeners on the West Coast know that rain is a rarity during the summer months,
much less a land falling tropical system.
While Hillary weakened to a tropical storm before making
landfall, its effects were extreme.
For the first time ever, the Southern California coast was placed
under a tropical storm warning.
One to three inches of rain fell across much as sound on California, with as
much as the foot in the mountains.
Death valley received an entire year's worth of rainfall in just a single day.
While rain in the summer is rarity and arguably a blessing for a
state where water comes at a premium, it was too much at once.
Flooding was widespread, and damage was extensive.
But the Pacific ocean wasn't done yet.
October's hurricane Otis was memorable for its rapid strengthening, which
even surprised meteorologists.
For much of the time after it formed on October 15th through the 22nd, Otis wasn't
even named, or even a tropical depression . In fact, several times it looked like
the storm would dissipate altogether.
But late on the 22nd, it finally gained tropical storm status, and its name Otis,
starting a historic intensification phase.
At the same time, wind currents were directing Otis northwestward
towards the Mexican coast.
By the afternoon of the 23rd, it was already a major category three hurricane
with winds of 125 miles an hour.
Otis continued to strengthen through the 25th when it reached category five
status with winds of 165 miles an hour.
It maintained this strength through landfall in the resort city of Acapulco.
Otis is the first Pacific category five hurricane to make landfall,
and by far the costliest: damage was estimated at $16 billion,
predominantly in and around Acapulco.
Then there's the strengthening: 115 miles per hour in 24 hours made it
the second fastest strengthening hurricane in recorded history,
and that's anywhere on the planet.
There's many more, but we're running out of time for this episode.
We'd like to hear from you.
If you agree or have other events to share, email us at
podcast@theweatherstationexperts.com.
We might share your feedback in a future episode.
You have just listened to the Weather Whys Podcast.
I'm your host, Ed Oswald.
Weather Whys is a production of The Weather Station Experts and Oz Media.
Today's episode was produced by Derek Oswald and myself from our studios
here in West Lawn, Pennsylvania.
If you'd like to learn more about Weather Whys visit Weather
Whys that's W-H-Y- S.show.
On our website, you can listen to this episode at any past
episodes and get in touch.
We'd love to hear from you.
Don't forget to subscribe to Weather Whys to get the latest episodes.
As soon as we release them, you can find those links to Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Google, and more on our website as well.
That's all for today.
Be sure to join us again next time, when we take a look
at California's megadrought.
Thank you for listening.