Northeast Heat Wave and Tropical Storm Erin: Your August Weather Update and more on the 1955 Delaware River floods from Jeff Morrison

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, this is meteorologist Steve Pelletier
and I am the weatherman.
Thanks for checking intotheweathermanpodcom On your
Tuesday.
It's the 12th day in the monthof August 2025.
Earlier this morning you mighthave seen the conjunction of the
planets Venus and Jupiter inthe pre-dawn sky and that is,
they were really close togetherin the pre-dawn.

(00:21):
If you had a clear sky thismorning, it's really something
to see.
It'll be a little bit farthertomorrow morning, but if you get
a chance, just get up a littlebit early.
Sunrise is right around 6o'clock in the morning.
Get up around 5.15, 5.30.
Just take a look out to thateastern horizon.
You can see those two brightobjects in the sky.
That's Venus and Jupiter.
Quite nice to see.

(00:41):
Weather-wise, it looks like thenortheast will continue to be
generally on the dry side, butstill quite warm.
Highs will range into the 90stoday, tomorrow, even right up
through Thursday, friday andeven into the weekend.
We do see a frontal systemarriving sometime in the
northeast, sometime late in theweekend or early next week,
which may represent some drier,slightly cooler conditions, but

(01:05):
it will be temperatures veryclose to, if not above, the 90
degree mark for the next severaldays.
High temperatures today willrange between 90 and 95 degrees,
which should be dry day withvery light winds.
The humidity value is still atmoderate levels.
Tomorrow it looks like back topartial sunshine and a 40 to 50
percent chance of late day andevening thunderstorms.
That'll be also the samesituation for Thursday High

(01:25):
temperatures of 90 to 95,nighttime lows 70 to 75.
Again, this is for thenortheast, centered around New
York City, where we're locatedin central and northern New
Jersey, and it looks like evenup in the Boston area
temperatures will be in theupper 80s and lower 90s right up
through Friday of this week.
Frontal system currently movingthrough the western Great Lakes
will be arriving and that'llcause the thunderstorms both

(01:45):
tomorrow evening and on Thursday.
But the high pressure behind itmodified high pressure is going
to be dry but on the warm sideprogressively and we might see
temperatures back into themiddle 90s by the middle portion
of this upcoming weekend,saturday or Sunday, and it does
look like a little bit of acooler flow.
We're starting to see thosehigh pressures starting to build
down from central and westernCanada and those will be making

(02:07):
a regular appearance in the eastover the next several days.
If you're traveling today, itlooks like just some scattered
light, shower and thunderstormaction around Atlanta.
It doesn't look too bad at all.
So generally on the dry sidefor central and south Florida
Might be a late day thunderstormin Charlotte, otherwise fair
conditions.
Fair in New York, philadelphia,baltimore and DC and also the
Boston area.

(02:27):
Just a little bit hazy Showersand thunderstorms in Chicago.
That'll slow things down intothe Windy City but it also looks
like scattered lightthunderstorms in Houston.
Heavier, possibly severeconditions.
Severe thunderstorm action inthe Dallas-Fort Worth area in
the afternoon.
Fog and smoke.
Southern and central Californiadry conditions, but

(02:48):
progressively a little bitwarmer as we head up to Portland
and Seattle over the nextseveral days.
But no problems flying intothose cities during both today
and tomorrow.
We're into the middle portion ofthe month of August and we're
going to have to start lookingat the tropics, and the
seven-day graphical tropicalweather outlook does show that
we have a tropical storm, erin,located off the African coast.

(03:10):
Well, probably about a third ofthe way across the Atlantic,
from the western coast of Africato the islands and from the
Azores and northern portions ofSouth America.
Erin is moving towards the west, northwest at this point and
probably will be a hurricane bythe time we get towards either

(03:32):
Thursday or Friday of this weekand it will probably be skirting
north of Puerto Rico and southof Bermuda as we head closer and
closer to the weekend.
Of course we will be watchingfor future development of
Tropical Storm Erin into ahurricane over the next 24 hours
and advise you accordingly.
That brings us to what we weretalking about yesterday.

(03:53):
Our friend Jeff Morrison wroteabout the historic flooding
along the Delaware River thatoccurred this week in New Jersey
and Pennsylvania.
In the year 1955.
The Delaware River rose to alevel never before seen after
Hurricane Connie and HurricaneDiane drenched the region with
record rainfall.
Just days apart, bothPhillipsburg, new Jersey, and

(04:15):
eastern Pennsylvania, locatedjust across from each other on
the Delaware River, were theepicenter of all the flooding.
First it was Hurricane Conniemaking landfall over the outer
banks of North Carolina as aCategory 2 hurricane, before
moving into the Chesapeake Bayarea and then into Pennsylvania.
Now, from that storm, aboutfive inches of rain fell in New

(04:36):
Jersey and 180,000 homes lostpower.
Locally, manville, which isaround central New Jersey,
declared a state of emergencyfrom river flooding.
Just five days later, on August17, 1955, hurricane Diane made
landfall a little further south,in Wilmington, north Carolina
and then turned northeast, wherethe warm Atlantic water helped
to produce record rainfallacross the region, with some

(05:00):
areas receiving as much as 10 to15 inches over 48 hours Across
the Delaware River.
Basins, rivers and streamsalready swollen by county's
rainfall had nowhere to send theexcess water.
The cumulative rainfalloverwhelmed the Delaware River,
particularly the Lehigh River,which meets the Delaware in
Easton.
So by August 20th of 1955, 70years ago the Delaware had risen

(05:23):
well above 22 feet in floodstage, raising a crest of 44.4
feet in Easton.
That's the highest everrecorded.
We'll continue this storytomorrow from Jeff Morrison.
In the meantime we've gotanother sunny and warm day
coming up for today in dryconditions, but we do have
tropical storm airing andsomething to talk about from the
tropics, and we'll continueabout this story about the

(05:46):
historic flood 70 years ago intomorrow's report.
Hope you have a great day today.
Talk to you first thingtomorrow.
Take care.