September 23, 2023 • 13 mins
Autumn arrives this weekend with yet another round of rain. Most of the summer has been wet, to the point where some cities are seeing close to record rain totals for the year, and it's not even October! What is causing all of this wet and humid weather? Plymouth State University Meteorology Professor Eric Hoffman breaks down the weather patterns we've been stuck in and offers some insight into what we can expect here in New England for the coming fall and winter months.
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(00:08):
From WBZ News Radio in Boston.This is New England Weekend, where each
week we come together talk about allthe topics important to you and the place
where you live. Great to beback with you again this week as always,
I'm Nicole Davis. Well, surprise, surprise, it's another wet weekend
here in our neck of the woods, the latest of many this summer.
Although technically this weekend we do markthe start of fall, but still our
(00:31):
lawns are gardens are inundated. Wehave had horrific flooding. These storms just
keep coming one after the other.And I was sitting in the newsroom and
I thought, you know, let'stry to break down what exactly is happening
here with an expert. We dolike experts here on the show. So
enter Eric Hoffman. He is aprofessor of meteorology at Plymouth State University in
New Hampshire. This is a schoolwell known for its weather programs, so
(00:55):
I am excited to learn what isgoing on here. Professor. It is
wonderful to have you on the show. Show. Of course, here is
the big question to start, whyhas it been so wet? Well,
that's somewhat easy to answer, butalso could be complicated depending on your point
of view. You know, essentiallythis summer has been extraordinarily wet for most
(01:19):
of New England. It's either thewettest summer on record or the top three
wettest summers on record. And what'sbeen going on from a weather point of
view is we've been in a sortof stagnant, persistent weather pattern where there's
weak low pressures over the Great Lakesand slow moving cold fronts that are traversing
(01:42):
New England every few days. Andout ahead of those cold fronts, we
get warm, moist air that's allready for thunderstorm action. You know,
it's warm, it's moist, it'sunstable. We get heavy rain and thunderstorms
in the summer, and then weget this pattern and where we're getting you
know, one slow moving cold frontafter another, and that produces you know,
(02:07):
regular amounts of rainfall or even heavyamounts of rainfall for a day or
two. But the fact that it'sbeen so wet all summer is because it's
been sort of, you know,in this pattern where we're not really breaking
out of that, and so onthe days when you're getting the real heavy
rain, there's potential for flooding,and you know, even the other days
(02:30):
you just notice it's cloudy and maybethere's some rain, So it's just persistent.
Yeah, and the ground is sosaturated. Does it look like we're
going to break out of this cycleanytime soon? Does some big Arctic air
mass or something have to come down? I mean, I'm not a meteorologist,
but like, do we need somethingbig to kind of whack us out
of this pattern? What's going tochange here? Well, the good news
(02:53):
is, right, the weather inthe mid latitudes is regulated by the jet
stream, and in the summer,the jet stream retreats northward and it's usually
a little weaker and we get thesevery weak storm systems coming through. I'm
sure your listeners are familiar with winterweather here, where the jet stream gets
(03:15):
really active and produces big, giantnortheasters. So the good news in terms
of breaking out of the weather patternis winter's coming, so so you know
the jet stream will become active,and you know, even in the winter
we can get into patterns where there'seither lots of precipt or really cold and
(03:35):
dry, So you know, yetto be seen how that will manifest.
But yeah, this pattern of lotsand lots of rain should break as the
winter season comes. Well, that'sgood. And this humidity too. I
mean, I keep joking with peoplethat I've moved to Florida and I didn't
expect to what is going on withall this humidity. Everything is just sticky.
I don't want to be sticky anymore. Yeah. Again, that's part
(04:00):
of the pattern, right, thepattern. It was really hot and really
dry out in the western United States. And when we get into that pattern,
it typically the eastern part of theUnited States is warm and humid.
And we certainly have had more thanour fair share of warm and humid days.
And I was I was actually lookingat the climate records, and we're
(04:23):
one of the top twenty warmest summersfor New England in general when you look
around all the New England states,and most of that is not because it's
been so hot in the daytime,all right, but it's been warm and
humid at night. So and andwe're probably for our minimum temperatures, we're
(04:45):
in the top ten warmest summers forour minimum temperatures. So when it's cloudy
and warm and humid, it doesn'tcool off at night, and that you
know, you really feel that,and that's a that's actually, you know,
something to exp The sleeping has beenterrible, and my electric bill has
been so high because I'm running theair conditioning all night, it seems,
(05:08):
and you know, thankfully it seemslike the fall air is starting to eke
its way in. But you know, we really I've had more than one
person ask me are we going tobe getting out of this anytime soon?
Because I'm really sick of having topay for the summer ac in the same
time, when I normally think aboutturning on the heat, it's very bizarre.
Well, as of course we allknow in New England, sooner or
(05:28):
later the switch will flip and willhave the heat on inevitably, But of
course you have to wait as longas possible to turn on the heat,
preferably Thanksgiving. But what do Iknow? So, you know, we
hear a lot of talk about LaNina and El Nino. Does this have
anything to do with any of thator is that something else entirely Well,
typically here in New England we don'thave a strong correlation with seasonal weather and
(05:53):
La Nina. Other parts of theUnited States have a very strong correlation.
So we're moving into an El Nino, and so the waters in the central
Pacific are warmer than normal, andthat produces some weather patterns in the US
typically little wetter than normal California inthe wintertime, we are than normal across
(06:13):
the southeast US. But there isn'ta strong correlation to weather patterns in New
England, so it can sort ofgo either way with Alina l Nino or
La Nino. So I would saythat this is probably not closely related to
those. That's good to know.But then, I mean the question is
is this seesaw weather that we're dealingwith. I mean, we had droughts
(06:35):
last year, we are swimming thisyear. I mean it is climate change
involved in any of this? Whatare your thoughts on that? Well,
certainly we understand that the climate ischanging, and for me, what I've
been noticing is that the climate changeexacerbates the problems when we get into these
persistent weather patterns. So we havea persistent weather pattern, it's warm and
(06:59):
humid. We're getting periods of heavyrain every few days or at least once
a week. So then the questionbecomes, Okay, is it more warm
and more humid than it would beotherwise? I think the answer is pretty
clear that yes, that's true.And the thing about warm air and warm
(07:19):
sea surface temperatures. By the way, the record the North Atlantic has had
record sea surface temperatures, not justwe've heard about the hot water in Florida
and all those other things, butall across the North Atlantic has had really
warm, above normal sea surface temperatures. So when you put warmer than normal
water and warmer air, it canhold more water vapor, or more water
(07:43):
vapor can be in the air.Yeah, and you get a persistent weather
system that's hitting above normal humidity andabove normal temperatures, and it's able to
really produce above normal precept So Ithink, yes, climate change is a
role in exacerbating what would have beenyou know, a wet summer to begin
(08:05):
with, but you know, maybenot record wettist Yeah, for sure.
But then I mean, looking ahead, obviously you don't have a weather crystal
ball. You've got models, butthey only go so far hot. I
mean, is this a pattern thatyou think we're going to be looking forward
to? I guess looking forward isnot the best term, but you know,
looking ahead to is the weather patternaround here getting more volatile or is
(08:31):
this just kind of like an outlierthat you're noticing, or do we not
know? It's okay if we don'tknow. Yeah, I'm not a climate
scientist, so I don't know theexact answer to that. I would say,
you know, last year was apretty good example. We had a
very dry summer and we followed thatup with a very wet summer. So
again, last year's weather pattern washot and dry, and it was probably
(08:54):
a little hotter than it would havebeen without climate change. This summer was
warm and wet. It was probablya little wetter and a little warmer because
of climate change. So you knowwe're going to have that year to year
variability, but you know, themagnitude of it might change with climate change.
(09:16):
Sure, I think a lot ofpeople just want to know what's coming
up next, because gosh, Iremember growing up twenty thirty years ago in
New Hampshire and we would have liketwo feet of snow by Christmas, right.
I grew up in part of theWhite Mountains and it was one of
those things, you know, upin your neck of the woods where we
used to have the ice storms allthe time and the snow, and it
just seems like a lot of peoplewho are older millennials like me, we
talk about how like we don't seewinter weather like that anymore, and it's
(09:39):
sad because I think we want ourchildren to be able to be thrown into
two feet of snow and have funthe way we did. But you know,
I mean we look forward to thewinter ahead. Last year it was
just so rainy. I mean,I wonder if there's a chance we're ever
going to get that snowy sort ofweather back. Well. You know,
it's really interesting winter weather also affectedby by climate ch change. I think
(10:01):
when we can hold the cold airin and have cold periods that are also
have enough storms to produce snow,we might actually get a lot of snow
because warm humid hair holds more watervapor r it's cold enough to produce,
so we might get a big one, so to speak. But you know,
(10:24):
I think in general, we're seeingthat winters are warmer and the warm
periods between cold episodes are a littlewarmer, so we get more melting or
you know, lots of storm systemsstart as rain. So yeah, you
know, I think it remains tobe seen. You know, if we
can get a cold winter, itmight be snowy that would be nice.
(10:48):
And at the end of the day, look, I mean, forecasting is
a really imperfect science. You know, you've got your models, you're doing
the best you can, You're you'refollowing the radars and all this other stuff,
but sometimes you're just not going toget it. There's only you're not
a weather swammy. I mean,you're doing the best you can. And
I think people need to remember that, right, And it's particularly challenging to
make seasonal forecasts and long term forecasts. You know, the forecasts for in
(11:16):
the next couple of days seventy twoforty eight hours are really quite good now
compared to where they were twenty thirtyyears ago when I was first, you
know, starting out in the business. So but you know, the challenges
on those longer term forecasts, andcertainly seasonal and subseasonal forecasting is really hard
(11:37):
to do. So that's where there'sa lot of uncertainty. But you know,
your your next day forecast or twodays from now forecasts generally pretty good.
Yeah, And we saw that evenwith the tropics recently, Hurricane that
wasn't really a hurricane when it gothere, Lee, you know, a
tropical storm whatever that was just burgeoningin the Atlantic, and I remember people
(11:58):
asking me for days like what's thisthing going to do? And the Weather
Service just kept telling us, look, we don't know yet. You've just
got to wait, and you don'twant to speculate too far out because weather
it's just going to do what it'sgonna do. It doesn't care what we
want. It's true, right,and you don't want to, you know,
get a panic going with with peoplewith all sorts of possibilities. But
(12:22):
with that storm three four days out, you know, it was zeroing in
that the impacts were going to bein eastern Maine and Nova Scotia primarily,
and sure enough, you know that'swhere the big impacts were. So luckily
it missed most of New England.But you know, we I think we
got really good information three four daysout for that storm. I'd say we
(12:45):
did well. Professor. This hasbeen really good information. Thank you for
kind of breaking it down for uswho are not you know, meteorologists like
you, and I really appreciate yourtime. Thank you for spending a bit
of time on the show with us. You're welcome and it was nice to
speaking with you. I have asafe and healthy weekend. Please join me
again next week for another edition ofthe show. I'm Nicole Davis from WBZ
NewsRadio on iHeartRadio
From WBZ News Radio in Boston.This is New England Weekend, where each
week we come together talk about allthe topics important to you and the place
where you live. Great to beback with you again this week as always,
I'm Nicole Davis. Well, surprise, surprise, it's another wet weekend
here in our neck of the woods, the latest of many this summer.
Although technically this weekend we do markthe start of fall, but still our
(00:31):
lawns are gardens are inundated. Wehave had horrific flooding. These storms just
keep coming one after the other.And I was sitting in the newsroom and
I thought, you know, let'stry to break down what exactly is happening
here with an expert. We dolike experts here on the show. So
enter Eric Hoffman. He is aprofessor of meteorology at Plymouth State University in
New Hampshire. This is a schoolwell known for its weather programs, so
(00:55):
I am excited to learn what isgoing on here. Professor. It is
wonderful to have you on the show. Show. Of course, here is
the big question to start, whyhas it been so wet? Well,
that's somewhat easy to answer, butalso could be complicated depending on your point
of view. You know, essentiallythis summer has been extraordinarily wet for most
(01:19):
of New England. It's either thewettest summer on record or the top three
wettest summers on record. And what'sbeen going on from a weather point of
view is we've been in a sortof stagnant, persistent weather pattern where there's
weak low pressures over the Great Lakesand slow moving cold fronts that are traversing
(01:42):
New England every few days. Andout ahead of those cold fronts, we
get warm, moist air that's allready for thunderstorm action. You know,
it's warm, it's moist, it'sunstable. We get heavy rain and thunderstorms
in the summer, and then weget this pattern and where we're getting you
know, one slow moving cold frontafter another, and that produces you know,
(02:07):
regular amounts of rainfall or even heavyamounts of rainfall for a day or
two. But the fact that it'sbeen so wet all summer is because it's
been sort of, you know,in this pattern where we're not really breaking
out of that, and so onthe days when you're getting the real heavy
rain, there's potential for flooding,and you know, even the other days
(02:30):
you just notice it's cloudy and maybethere's some rain, So it's just persistent.
Yeah, and the ground is sosaturated. Does it look like we're
going to break out of this cycleanytime soon? Does some big Arctic air
mass or something have to come down? I mean, I'm not a meteorologist,
but like, do we need somethingbig to kind of whack us out
of this pattern? What's going tochange here? Well, the good news
(02:53):
is, right, the weather inthe mid latitudes is regulated by the jet
stream, and in the summer,the jet stream retreats northward and it's usually
a little weaker and we get thesevery weak storm systems coming through. I'm
sure your listeners are familiar with winterweather here, where the jet stream gets
(03:15):
really active and produces big, giantnortheasters. So the good news in terms
of breaking out of the weather patternis winter's coming, so so you know
the jet stream will become active,and you know, even in the winter
we can get into patterns where there'seither lots of precipt or really cold and
(03:35):
dry, So you know, yetto be seen how that will manifest.
But yeah, this pattern of lotsand lots of rain should break as the
winter season comes. Well, that'sgood. And this humidity too. I
mean, I keep joking with peoplethat I've moved to Florida and I didn't
expect to what is going on withall this humidity. Everything is just sticky.
I don't want to be sticky anymore. Yeah. Again, that's part
(04:00):
of the pattern, right, thepattern. It was really hot and really
dry out in the western United States. And when we get into that pattern,
it typically the eastern part of theUnited States is warm and humid.
And we certainly have had more thanour fair share of warm and humid days.
And I was I was actually lookingat the climate records, and we're
(04:23):
one of the top twenty warmest summersfor New England in general when you look
around all the New England states,and most of that is not because it's
been so hot in the daytime,all right, but it's been warm and
humid at night. So and andwe're probably for our minimum temperatures, we're
(04:45):
in the top ten warmest summers forour minimum temperatures. So when it's cloudy
and warm and humid, it doesn'tcool off at night, and that you
know, you really feel that,and that's a that's actually, you know,
something to exp The sleeping has beenterrible, and my electric bill has
been so high because I'm running theair conditioning all night, it seems,
(05:08):
and you know, thankfully it seemslike the fall air is starting to eke
its way in. But you know, we really I've had more than one
person ask me are we going tobe getting out of this anytime soon?
Because I'm really sick of having topay for the summer ac in the same
time, when I normally think aboutturning on the heat, it's very bizarre.
Well, as of course we allknow in New England, sooner or
(05:28):
later the switch will flip and willhave the heat on inevitably, But of
course you have to wait as longas possible to turn on the heat,
preferably Thanksgiving. But what do Iknow? So, you know, we
hear a lot of talk about LaNina and El Nino. Does this have
anything to do with any of thator is that something else entirely Well,
typically here in New England we don'thave a strong correlation with seasonal weather and
(05:53):
La Nina. Other parts of theUnited States have a very strong correlation.
So we're moving into an El Nino, and so the waters in the central
Pacific are warmer than normal, andthat produces some weather patterns in the US
typically little wetter than normal California inthe wintertime, we are than normal across
(06:13):
the southeast US. But there isn'ta strong correlation to weather patterns in New
England, so it can sort ofgo either way with Alina l Nino or
La Nino. So I would saythat this is probably not closely related to
those. That's good to know.But then, I mean the question is
is this seesaw weather that we're dealingwith. I mean, we had droughts
(06:35):
last year, we are swimming thisyear. I mean it is climate change
involved in any of this? Whatare your thoughts on that? Well,
certainly we understand that the climate ischanging, and for me, what I've
been noticing is that the climate changeexacerbates the problems when we get into these
persistent weather patterns. So we havea persistent weather pattern, it's warm and
(06:59):
humid. We're getting periods of heavyrain every few days or at least once
a week. So then the questionbecomes, Okay, is it more warm
and more humid than it would beotherwise? I think the answer is pretty
clear that yes, that's true.And the thing about warm air and warm
(07:19):
sea surface temperatures. By the way, the record the North Atlantic has had
record sea surface temperatures, not justwe've heard about the hot water in Florida
and all those other things, butall across the North Atlantic has had really
warm, above normal sea surface temperatures. So when you put warmer than normal
water and warmer air, it canhold more water vapor, or more water
(07:43):
vapor can be in the air.Yeah, and you get a persistent weather
system that's hitting above normal humidity andabove normal temperatures, and it's able to
really produce above normal precept So Ithink, yes, climate change is a
role in exacerbating what would have beenyou know, a wet summer to begin
(08:05):
with, but you know, maybenot record wettist Yeah, for sure.
But then I mean, looking ahead, obviously you don't have a weather crystal
ball. You've got models, butthey only go so far hot. I
mean, is this a pattern thatyou think we're going to be looking forward
to? I guess looking forward isnot the best term, but you know,
looking ahead to is the weather patternaround here getting more volatile or is
(08:31):
this just kind of like an outlierthat you're noticing, or do we not
know? It's okay if we don'tknow. Yeah, I'm not a climate
scientist, so I don't know theexact answer to that. I would say,
you know, last year was apretty good example. We had a
very dry summer and we followed thatup with a very wet summer. So
again, last year's weather pattern washot and dry, and it was probably
(08:54):
a little hotter than it would havebeen without climate change. This summer was
warm and wet. It was probablya little wetter and a little warmer because
of climate change. So you knowwe're going to have that year to year
variability, but you know, themagnitude of it might change with climate change.
(09:16):
Sure, I think a lot ofpeople just want to know what's coming
up next, because gosh, Iremember growing up twenty thirty years ago in
New Hampshire and we would have liketwo feet of snow by Christmas, right.
I grew up in part of theWhite Mountains and it was one of
those things, you know, upin your neck of the woods where we
used to have the ice storms allthe time and the snow, and it
just seems like a lot of peoplewho are older millennials like me, we
talk about how like we don't seewinter weather like that anymore, and it's
(09:39):
sad because I think we want ourchildren to be able to be thrown into
two feet of snow and have funthe way we did. But you know,
I mean we look forward to thewinter ahead. Last year it was
just so rainy. I mean,I wonder if there's a chance we're ever
going to get that snowy sort ofweather back. Well. You know,
it's really interesting winter weather also affectedby by climate ch change. I think
(10:01):
when we can hold the cold airin and have cold periods that are also
have enough storms to produce snow,we might actually get a lot of snow
because warm humid hair holds more watervapor r it's cold enough to produce,
so we might get a big one, so to speak. But you know,
(10:24):
I think in general, we're seeingthat winters are warmer and the warm
periods between cold episodes are a littlewarmer, so we get more melting or
you know, lots of storm systemsstart as rain. So yeah, you
know, I think it remains tobe seen. You know, if we
can get a cold winter, itmight be snowy that would be nice.
(10:48):
And at the end of the day, look, I mean, forecasting is
a really imperfect science. You know, you've got your models, you're doing
the best you can, You're you'refollowing the radars and all this other stuff,
but sometimes you're just not going toget it. There's only you're not
a weather swammy. I mean,you're doing the best you can. And
I think people need to remember that, right, And it's particularly challenging to
make seasonal forecasts and long term forecasts. You know, the forecasts for in
(11:16):
the next couple of days seventy twoforty eight hours are really quite good now
compared to where they were twenty thirtyyears ago when I was first, you
know, starting out in the business. So but you know, the challenges
on those longer term forecasts, andcertainly seasonal and subseasonal forecasting is really hard
(11:37):
to do. So that's where there'sa lot of uncertainty. But you know,
your your next day forecast or twodays from now forecasts generally pretty good.
Yeah, And we saw that evenwith the tropics recently, Hurricane that
wasn't really a hurricane when it gothere, Lee, you know, a
tropical storm whatever that was just burgeoningin the Atlantic, and I remember people
(11:58):
asking me for days like what's thisthing going to do? And the Weather
Service just kept telling us, look, we don't know yet. You've just
got to wait, and you don'twant to speculate too far out because weather
it's just going to do what it'sgonna do. It doesn't care what we
want. It's true, right,and you don't want to, you know,
get a panic going with with peoplewith all sorts of possibilities. But
(12:22):
with that storm three four days out, you know, it was zeroing in
that the impacts were going to bein eastern Maine and Nova Scotia primarily,
and sure enough, you know that'swhere the big impacts were. So luckily
it missed most of New England.But you know, we I think we
got really good information three four daysout for that storm. I'd say we
(12:45):
did well. Professor. This hasbeen really good information. Thank you for
kind of breaking it down for uswho are not you know, meteorologists like
you, and I really appreciate yourtime. Thank you for spending a bit
of time on the show with us. You're welcome and it was nice to
speaking with you. I have asafe and healthy weekend. Please join me
again next week for another edition ofthe show. I'm Nicole Davis from WBZ
NewsRadio on iHeartRadio
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