A year of extremes: 2024 weather in review

Weatherwise, July 2024 was a doozy.

Palm Springs hit 124 degrees. Alaska had the wettest July on record. Washington DC tied its record for the most consecutive days with temperatures over 100. Hurricane Beryl became the earliest category five hurricane in history. And a Chicago derecho spawned 32 tornadoes in single day. 

“All of that happened just in July, which is just astonishing,” says Josh Ward, field meteorologist for Washington State University’s AgWeatherNet.

Last year was another year for weather extremes in the United States, Ward notes. As of November 1, the nation experienced 24 weather and climate disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion each in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Global warming is contributing to the increase in weather-related disasters. 

Ward graduated from the University of North Carolina Asheville in May and moved to Eastern Washington in September. Had he stayed in Asheville, he would have witnessed the catastrophic flooding in western North Carolina that followed Hurricane Helene’s September 26 landfall in Florida and the storm’s destructive path through the Southeast.

Looking ahead for the Northwest, Ward says the weak La Niña developing will mean a cold, snowy winter.

Meanwhile, NOAA has reported that fall 2024 was the warmest on record for the United States. “Another record broken,” Ward says. “We are in the decade of breaking records for weather, I do believe.  So be on the lookout for that in the future.”

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Transcript

Washington State Magazine podcast

Episode 35: 2024 weather in review

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Larry Clark: Weatherwise, July 2024 was a doozy. Record-breaking heat across the US. The earliest Category 5 hurricane on record. And 32 tornadoes in a single day near Chicago.  All of 2024 was astonishing. As of November 1, the nation experienced 24 weather and climate disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion each in damage. You’re listening to the Washington State Magazine podcast: stories connecting you to Washington State University, the state, and the world. Josh Ward, field meteorologist for Washington State University’s AgWeatherNet, talks with Washington State Magazine science writer Becky Kramer about the weather extremes in 2024. Ward also looks ahead to 2025 winter weather in the Pacific Northwest.

Becky Kramer: So, Josh, welcome to the Washington State Magazine podcast.

Josh Ward: Yes. Thank you for having me, Becky. It's great to be here.

Becky Kramer: So you're a field meteorologist and you work for AgWeatherNet. And tell me a little bit about what you do and what AgWeatherNet is. 

Josh Ward: Yeah, I'm the one of two field meteorologists here at AgWeatherNet, and I'm originally from North Carolina, so that's where you can see the accent from. I went to school in UNC Asheville, graduated with my undergrad in May in atmospheric science. And my main responsibility is building and maintaining the network that we have of weather stations set up across the state. There's about 300 or so weather stations that we maintain, and we're getting ready to build another 35 coming in the next few years. 

Here at AgWeatherNet, we also have a team, a diverse team, that work on model forecasts as well, using all of the data across the stations, across the network. And they input this data into their models, so that we can get a spring, fall, frost forecasting model for the state, which is a service that we provide.

We also have these private stations set up in many of the orchards across the state and it allows them to monitor heat stress and grape hardiness and, and things of that nature. in addition to that, we also have weather stations at cattle yards. So the cattle comfort index for cattle feeders across the state. 

I believe not too long ago, there was a pretty cold snap, so we use the Cattle Comfort Index so the cattle feeders will know when to turn on heaters, and things of that nature.

Becky Kramer: So your background is in atmospheric science and part of your studies were understanding why we have weather.

Josh Ward: Yes. So I have a concentration in climatology and, not a lot of people know this, but the reason that we do have weather is the imbalance of incoming radiation, , at the equator and the poles.

Becky Kramer: And that's from the sun.

Josh Ward: From the sun, yep. So all the solar radiation comes in more at the equator than it does at the poles.

So you get this really warm air mass at the equator and really cooler mass at the poles. So, the atmosphere's job is to distribute this energy across the globe so that the Earth can reach an equilibrium point. And it does that through mid latitude cyclones and cold fronts and things of that nature. That's the reason we even have weather.

Becky Kramer: So in the last 10 to 15 years, we've had quite a few very big and very damaging weather events. And can you talk about why we're seeing an increase? 

Josh Ward: If we look at the last, you know, 10 to 15 years and the number of billion dollar events that we've had from the late 20th century all the way up to the present time, we see that the billion dollar events have doubled in the past 10 to 15 years. And what's going on here is that we have a lot more energy in the atmosphere than we used to. So, more energy in the atmosphere requires the atmosphere to distribute it somehow. And it's doing that through these really compact and high energy mesoscale events, such as thunderstorms. So these thunderstorms are actually the most frequent billion dollar event in the past 10 to 15 years and that has tripled since the late 20th century, early 2000s. One of the things we can look at here is the 2022 flooding event in Kentucky just absolutely dumped all kinds of water on this area. Rainfall totals were 600 percent above the normal rate here. Again, it's just so much energy. This convection is so strong that it's just allowing all this water to just be dumped in one area very quickly. Now it is important to note that with that event, the atmosphere did have somewhat of a perfect setup but nonetheless, still absolutely devastating. And on the subject of flooding in the Appalachian Mountains, there was a paper written, in the late nineties, early two thousands, that shows these flash flood events have increased dramatically since the sixties and eighties. We see many more frequent flash flooding events. And again, it's just these mesoscale thunderstorms that are just dumping so much rain so quickly.

Becky Kramer: you talked earlier about just more energy.

Josh Ward: Yeah.

Becky Kramer: In the atmosphere. Is global warming a contributor to this?

Josh Ward: Global warming is a contributor to this. There's no way around it. And, in addition, it is very complex, but we also have more moisture because of this. So sea surface temperatures are rising and we have more abundant moisture. So more moisture means more potential for strong convection. And again, we see these, these really compact thunderstorms that are developing here in just the past 10, 15 years. There's so much more damaging than they used to be.

Becky Kramer: So let's talk about the year in general. What were some of the notable events, weatherwise, for 2024?

Josh Ward: Sure, there was so much that happened this year. I mean, so many records were broken. I have a list here that I like to go through, starting with New Hampshire. New Hampshire saw the warmest record in July, the warmest July on record so far. There were five locations in the West that experienced record high temperatures, starting with Palm Springs, California, at 124 degrees Fahrenheit. Alaska had the wettest July on record. Washington, DC tied the record for the most consecutive days of temperatures over 100. Hurricane Beryl became the earliest category five hurricane in history and a Chicago derecho spawned 32 tornadoes in one day. The most for that area in history. And all of that happened just in July, just in July, which is just astonishing. I mean, we're seeing so many records broke just even in the past two years. I mean, it's crazy.

Becky Kramer: What made July the month when all this happened?

Josh Ward: Well, July is when we have the mesoscale and tropical meteorology events. So this is where you have the greatest temperature gradients because the earth is very warm at the bottom and the atmosphere is cooler up top, which enhances the risk of convection and you know derechos and things of that nature.

Becky Kramer: And, what are derechos?

Josh Ward: Derecho is a pretty much a straight, a widespread straight-line windstorm that can or cannot be associated with thunderstorms. That is a derecho.

Becky Kramer: You were telling me what was happening. 

Josh Ward: Yeah, sure. We can look at the Pacific Northwest actually, if you want to. So, for example, from my understanding, I wasn't here in July, but eastern Washington seemed to be very warm during this month. And what happened was, I did a little bit of research on this, and the Arctic oscillation actually played a role here, which is the oscillation that refers to the pressure difference over the poles and the mid-latitudes. When this index is in a positive state, usually we get these warmer temperatures across the northern part of the country. We saw that in July here in eastern Washington, where the index was very positive. So we had the jet stream was much higher than it normally is. And we had all this warm air from California in the West rising up to meet in the Pacific Northwest. So that's what we saw, the temperature increase there. 

Becky Kramer: Now July seemed, I don't know, maybe about 10 degrees warmer than usual in Pullman, where I'm based. But August seemed cooler than normal. Was that true or is that just by perception?

Josh Ward: A little bit of truth and perception in there. According to climatology and average temperatures in August here in eastern Washington, they were actually normal, but I think some of the perception comes in here when you come off of these very extreme temperatures in July. And once you go back to normal, it seems much cooler, but that's not really the case. It's just normal, and what happened here again, the Arctic oscillation index was negative here. So that jet stream was able to dip down a little bit more and provide some cooler air for the state in August.

Becky Kramer: So what was happening with wildfires last year?

Josh Ward: Well, me being new to the West here, I'm not very familiar with wildfires and things of that nature. When I got here, I was being trained in the field, and we would drive the vehicles out to the stations. And the person training me said, don’t park the vehicle over tall grass. And I was like, hmm. I mean, I've never had an issue with that before. I don't understand. It was like just the heat from the engine can start a wildfire here in Washington state. And I was like, wow, you know, that's just crazy. In terms of wildfires across the state in 2024 here in Washington, I pulled up the data for the Chelan station that the WeatherNet has, and I was looking at the past, three years worth of data and everything seemed to be the same this year as the previous years, up into 2021, even though there were many more wildfires in the previous years. So I think the potential for wildfires here was high. What happened though was just a very good job with the state’s handling the wildfires. There were 1,400 ignitions this year, but 95 percent of those were 10 acres or less. 

Becky Kramer: So, anything else on weather for 2024? 

[Josh Ward: Yeah. Um, let's talk about Hurricane Helene. So we saw these absolutely devastating events happen in Asheville and eastern Tennessee. And the crest for the rivers were a record for eight locations in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Asheville also broke its one, two and three day rainfall records that previously stood for 100 years with this event. And what's interesting is that there was a predecessor event in western North Carolina, before this hurricane hit. So it's already wet here. This really, really enhanced the flooding, um, because the ground was already saturated, so we see the runoff was much larger. It was still a lot of, a lot of water, whether or not the predecessor event existed, just the predecessor event made it even worse than it could have been. 

Becky Kramer: Remind me the time frame for that.

Josh Ward: Oh man, this was about two, I think two weeks after I had left for Washington State. Um, so I had just dodged this. I was just in Asheville in May. I moved out here in September. And that's when it happened, pretty much. So, yep, late, mid late September.

Becky Kramer: Yeah. I've never been in a hurricane, never been near one. We did have a big windstorm. I think it was 2015 in the Spokane area. And they said we had kind of hurricane force winds. But of course, we didn't get the water with it. 

Josh Ward: Hurricanes are…they're very alarming, especially your first one. The first hurricane that you ever, if you have to go through one, it's very scary. Visibility is low, winds are high, you know, enormous amount of water, possibility for tornadoes. Especially here, uh, in the past five years, we've just seen a lot of tornadoes coming from hurricanes.

Becky Kramer: So what's ahead weatherwise for 2025 for the Pacific Northwest?

Josh Ward: Yeah. So it looks like we're heading into a weak La Nina here upcoming this winter. And that's going to create some, some interesting patterns here for the Pacific Northwest. My prediction is that we'll see a wetter and cooler than normal winter. And when you look at this, given the Arctic oscillation, what it's been doing here in the winter months for the past few years, you see the average index for the Arctic oscillation is decreasing. That leads me to believe that there's a strong possibility that we could have a pretty snowy winter here in eastern Washington, with very similar to last year where we saw these cold snaps, um, which impacted growers across the across the state.

Becky Kramer: So, I was going to ask too, can anyone sign up for AgWeatherNet to get the forecasts from the organization?

Josh Ward: Yes, absolutely. You can go to our website at weather.wsu.edu. And you can click the drop down. You'll see a signin tab. You can click that and it gives you an option to register. And you can type in your information and you'll get the weekly outlook forecast that I do each week for the state of Washington. Um, it'll be a quick summary in your inbox and then with that will be a link to the full outlook on our web page.

Becky Kramer: Josh, it's been great having you on the podcast. Do you have any closing thoughts?

Josh Ward: Yes Thank you for having me and I do have a few closing thoughts actually. So I came across this yesterday, but NOAA just found that the Arctic is now a carbon source than a carbon sink and this is due to more melting of the ice here, releasing the layer of permafrost in the Arctic, which is contributing to additional carbon in our atmosphere, which is interesting. We also saw that NOAA reported that fall of 2024 was the warmest on record for the United States. Another record broken. I mean, we are in the decade of breaking records for weather I do believe. So be on the lookout for that in the future.

Becky Kramer: Thank you. So great to meet you and, and welcome to the Northwest.

Josh Ward: Thank you. It was nice to meet you as well.

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Larry Clark: Thanks for listening. If you’d like to sign up for AgWeatherNet updates, the link is in the show notes. You can find more podcasts and WSU stories at magazine.wsu.edu. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. The episode was produced by Becky Kramer and Larry Clark. Our music is by WSU emeritus music professor and composer Greg Yasinitsky.