Weather extremes seen in 2020
From ferocious fires to a historic hurricane season, most breathing a sign of relief year is over
As most of us are breathing a sigh of relief that 2020 is just about over, many meteorologists are doing the same thing. The year featured devastating wildfires and hurricanes, tornadoes, derechos and flooding, and just about everything else the atmosphere has to offer.
Wildfires and hurricanes were relentless and especially punishing, setting records for the amount of real estate impacted in the Lower 48, while killing dozens. Supercharged by humancaused climate change, they signaled trouble for the future as the climate warms further.
A year filled with extreme weather meant a hefty price tag: Insurance firm Aon estimates that at least 25 billion- dollar weather disasters unfolded across the United States this year.
“The United States has endured one of its costliest years for weather disasters on record and is facing an economic toll that will exceed $100 billion,” wrote Steven Bowen, head of catastrophe insight at Aon, in an email.
Fire season
Fueled by record heat and parched vegetation, fanned by howling winds and, at times, sparked by blitzes of lightning, the West was plagued by an onslaught of devastating wildfires that began in June and continued into December.
The fires occurred in a region
that is trending hotter, drier and more susceptible to large blazes due to climate change. In California, which saw a record wildfire season, a study published in August showed the frequency of fall days with extreme fire-weather conditions has alreadymore than doubled since the 1980s.
In early September, when fires exploded not only in California but also Oregon and Washington, Nick Nauslar, a meteorologist at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, said the eruption surpassed anything in the modern record.
“Multiple fires made 20+ mile runs in 24-hours over the last few days in California, Oregon, and Washington,” he said in an email. “Most of these fires are making massive runs in timber and burning tens of thousands of acres and in some cases 100,000+ acres in one day. The shear amount of fire on the landscape is surreal, and no one I have talked to can remember anything like it.”
In mid-September, the smoke fromthese blazes led to hazardous levels of air pollution all along theWest Coast and covered almost the entirety of the Lower 48 even reaching D.C.
Colorado also experienced record wildfire activity this fall that was only finally quelled when snow arrived.
Hurricane season
Hurricane Season 2020 will be remembered for decades to come. It proved the busiest Atlantic hurricane season on recordwith thirty named storms, more than two andahalf times the seasonal average of a dozen.
Thirteen hurricanes and six major hurricanes punctuated unending meteorological assembly line. A record 12 named Atlantic storms made landfall in the Lower 48, including five in Louisiana. Two of those landfalls, Laura and Delta, werewithin 15miles of each other and both ravaged the Lake Charles area.
Ominously, 10 storms rapidly intensified, their peak winds strengthening by at least 35 mph in 24 hours, tying 1995 for the most in a single season. Studies have shown rapid intensification becoming more likely as ocean waters warm due to climate change.
Tropical systems caused $38 billion in damage across the Lower 48.
Thunderstorms and tornadoes
While hurricanes and wildfires were unforgiving, thunderstorms and tornadoes were the most expensive disasters in the Lower 48 in 2020.
Fourteen of the 25 billondollar weather disasters in 2020, headlined by the Iowa derecho in August and Nashville tornado in March, were from severe thunderstorms.
“Perhaps to the surprise of many people, the biggest driver of losses in 2020 came from severe convective storms,” said Bowen.
Winter storms
The year began with a rather tame winter as a stable polar vortex kept blasts of frigid air bottled up that might otherwise trigger major snowstorms in the Lower 48 states.
But the winter of 202021 started with a blast as a blockbuster snowstorm charged up the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast coasts.