“Connecting the Dots” January 2025

The 10 Strangest Things We Saw in 2024’s Weather. Weather Underground takes a global look at last year’s weather oddities: “2024 was a year of weird weather, from snow to hurricanes, floods to drought, and wildfires to tornadoes. S​ome of these events were unusual for where or when they occurred. Others were just plain bizarre. Here is our ranked list of the strangest things we saw in 2024, followed by some other oddities that didn’t quite make the top 10 list…”

2024 Tornado Count Was Second Worst on Record. USA Today has a good overview; here’s an excerpt: “…The year finished as one of the roughest in recent history for weather-related disasters. The U.S. was pummeled by five landfalling hurricanes and a stream of atmospheric rivers, heat waves and droughts. That final burst of twisters is expected to make 2024 the second-worst year on record for tornadoes across the nation. As of Dec. 31, the National Weather Service tallied 1,855 preliminary tornado reports, including 90 in December. That number will drop and the final verified numbers aren’t expected until March 1, said Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma…”

Changes in Store for Atmospheric Rivers. UCAR has a post describing potential shifts in atmospheric rivers impacting the west coast in a warming environment: “Communities up and down the West Coast of the United States can expect the potent storms known as atmospheric rivers to evolve as the climate warms. But residents in Southern California will see much different changes than residents in more northerly locations like Seattle. New research, led by scientists at the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR), found that warming conditions will increase evaporation of ocean waters and significantly alter atmospheric rivers to the south. Farther north, however, atmospheric rivers will be most influenced by rising temperatures in the ocean and atmosphere…”

On January 7, 2025 a severe Santa Ana wind event began across SoCal. I’ve never seen NOAA use language like this:

California was Already in Home-Insurance Crisis Before Los Angeles Infernos. The Wall Street Journal (paywall) reports: “…California has faced the brunt of climate change-driven wildfire seasons, which are longer and result in more-frequent fires and larger areas burned, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. New development in fire-prone areas and increased home values and repair costs, has further fueled the rise in insured losses. Insurers have dropped existing customers in areas seen as high risk for wildfires. State Farm last year announced plans to nonrenew 30,000 property policies in California, including 69% of those in Pacific Palisades…”

See How a Fire in the Hills Turned Into an Historic Blaze. WSJ.com has the infographic timeline; here’s the intro: “A brush fire on Tuesday (January 7, 2025) set off one of the most destructive blazes in Los Angeles history: the Palisades fire. By Thursday evening, nearly 20,000 acres of land and thousands of structures had been burned, displacing thousands of residents. Here’s how the blaze swiftly traveled from the brush-filled hills to nearby residential enclaves, forcing residents to quickly move south through gridlocked paths.

The 24 Hours When LA Went Up in Flames. The New York Times (paywall) has a harrowing, hour-by-hour account of the historic fires that devastated large swaths of Los Angeles.

No Flood Gauges, No Warnings: 99% of US Streams are Off the Radar Amid Rising Flash Flood Risks. The Conversation has the post; here’s an excerpt: “…The National Weather Service uses advanced models to issue flood warnings. These models rely on historical trends, land cover information and a network of over 11,800 streamgages – sensors that provide near-real-time data on precipitation, streamflow and water depth – to simulate water flow. Much of that data is available online in real time. However, the streamgage network covers less than 1% of the nation’s rivers and streams…”

Extreme weather is, in fact, trending more severe over time, based on CEI data from NOAA:

Floods are Top Risk to Supply Chains in 2024, Everstream Says. The US experienced more flooding events than any other country last year, according to Insurancejournal.com: “…Everstream counted 123 flooding events in the US last year, making the nation the most flood-hit globally. Flood insurance claims due to Hurricane Helene, which swamped the southern states in September, could ultimately total $7 billion, according to the the US Federal Emergency Management Agency...”

2024 Hottest on Record Worldwide, Capping 10 Years of Unprecedented Heat. CNN.com has the update: “It’s official: 2024 was the hottest year on record, breaking the previous record set in 2023 and pushing the world over a critical climate threshold, according to new data from Europe’s climate monitoring agency Copernicus. Last year was 1.6 degrees hotter than the period before humans began burning large amounts of fossil fuels, Copernicus found. It makes 2024 the first calendar year to breach the 1.5-degree limit countries agreed to avoid under the Paris climate agreement in 2015…”

Climate Models Can’t Explain What’s Happening to Earth. Put simply, the warming is happening faster than climate models predicted. The Atlantic has the story; here’s a clip: “…Today’s climate models very accurately describe the broad strokes of Earth’s future. But warming has also now progressed enough that scientists are noticing unsettling mismatches between some of their predictions and real outcomes. Kai Kornhuber, a climate scientist at Columbia University, and his colleagues recently found that, on every continent except Antarctica, certain regions showed up as mysterious hot spots, suffering repeated heat waves worse than what any model could predict or explain. Across places where a third of humanity lives, actual daily temperature records are outpacing model predictions, according to forthcoming research from Dartmouth’s Alexander Gottlieb and Justin Mankin. And a global jump in temperature that lasted from mid-2023 to this past June remains largely unexplained, a fact that troubles Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, although it doesn’t entirely surprise him...”

Climate Change Made 2024 Atlantic Hurricanes Up To 28 MPH Stronger, Study Finds. Yes, consistently warmer ocean water tends to amp up hurricane speeds before landfall, according to research highlighted by The Jerusalem Post. Here’s an excerpt: “A new scientific study found that human-caused climate change has intensified Atlantic hurricanes over the past six years. According to research published in the journal Environmental Research: Climate, climate change boosted the maximum sustained winds of the 11 hurricanes that formed in the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season by 9 to 28 miles per hour due to warmer-than-average ocean temperatures, as reported by ABC News. “Every hurricane in 2024 was stronger than it would have been 100 years ago,” said Daniel Gilford, a climate scientist at Climate Central, according to CNN. The study revealed that 84% of hurricanes between 2019 and 2023 were more intense than they would have been without climate change, showing a human fingerprint on storm strength...”