Western ridge + Ohio Valley trough + very warm water off NE = Record wet summer/year for East Coast!
With a mean Great Basin ridge and Great Lakes to Ohio Valley trough and lows sweeping over the Great Lakes into the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic, waves of Gulf and Caribbean moisture have frequently lifted north. With tropical air meeting incoming fronts from the west, major rainfall and flood events have been common place since June 1 from Richmond, VA up into southern New York state.
Excerpt from wunderground.com
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, has measured 36.85 inches of precipitation, topping the previous record set in 1945, when the area recorded its wettest July on record.
An impressive 60.83 inches of precipitation have fallen in Wilmington, North Carolina, so far in 2018, easily beating the previous year-to-date record of 51.38 inches set in 1966.
For Richmond and Luray, Virginia, as well as Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, 2018 has, so far, been the rainiest year on record.
The wettest year-to-date record broken in Harrisburg was previously set in 1972, incredible rainfall totals were produced by Hurricane Agnes. This new rainfall record through Aug. 15 of 41.53 inches has topped the previous record by less than 0.1 inches.
Hurricane Agnes made its U.S. landfall in the Florida Panhandle before emerging off the North Carolina coast and then tracking northwestward over the Northeast.
Rainfall totals reached 19 inches in Western Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, just to the northeast of Harrisburg.
Why so wet?
The three key ingredients of heat, enhanced humidity and fronts have never been far away from each other. The likely enhancement of these rains can undoubtedly be attributed to record warm SST’s off and against the East Coast, fueling an already moisture rich atmosphere.
It’s been a pattern on repeat all summer long.
Several cities in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast are headed for their wettest year as well as summer on record.
This map really tells the story. Some locations across the mid atlantic and northeast are at 500% of normal rainfall over the past 30 days! All thanks to the strong Bermuda high locking up the east coast and preventing anything from really moving across the country. pic.twitter.com/dvp628aCb7
— Chris Sowers (@chris_sowers) August 15, 2018
30-day NWS precip estimates show over 20 inches of rain in spots from Florida to the Carolinas, Maryland and Pennsylvania… over 8 inches departure over a wide area of the East Coast. pic.twitter.com/Q6MZpXklq8
— Jesse Ferrell (@Accu_Jesse) August 14, 2018
– State College, PA has broken their all-time wettest Summer record already. pic.twitter.com/6KrdAf3GAn
— Jesse Ferrell (@Accu_Jesse) August 14, 2018
As well as those rains, the warm water offshore has helped increase humidity and therefore nights have remained unusually, if not record warm.
The record for most 70F+ nights has already fallen @bhobservatory so whatever we get here on out will just be piling on. pic.twitter.com/qzYa62Q7DL
— Eric Fisher (@ericfisher) August 19, 2018
Three nights with a low of 71F this July @NWSCaribou was amazing as we tied the all-time record warm low temperature on 3 consecutive nights. #mewx pic.twitter.com/VMyakTRMZa
— NWS Caribou (@NWSCaribou) July 31, 2018
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