What's been causing the extreme amounts of rain in the Northeast?

AccuWeather

If you remember the repeated storms that kept slamming California last winter, the weather pattern now is sort of like the opposite of that. AccuWeather's Bob Larson explains.

Transcript

00:00 Well, if it isn't pouring rain, it's been incredibly humid.

00:03 We've seen the images from this summer in the Northeast and throughout New England especially,

00:08 washed out, flooded or destroyed roads, along with swollen and raging rivers.

00:13 AccuWeather regional expert Bob Larson joins us to put some perspective on this ridiculous

00:18 rainfall.

00:19 Bob, thanks for your time.

00:20 Thanks for joining us.

00:21 Sure.

00:22 It's good to be here, Kevin.

00:23 And what we've seen...

00:24 I'm sorry.

00:25 Go right ahead.

00:26 I'm sorry.

00:27 Hey, hey, you know.

00:28 I think that the upper level wind pattern, if you look at what weather is happening anywhere

00:33 in the world, you can almost always trace it to what?

00:36 The jet stream, right?

00:37 And here in the U.S., in the summertime, what we're seeing is a jet stream that's not too

00:42 different from a normal summer.

00:44 But tell us how that jet stream's location has been impacting some of the storms we've

00:49 seen in the Northeast this summer.

00:51 Well, here we see a typical jet stream pattern during the summer.

00:54 To get into the warmer summer months, the jet stream lifts north during the warm weather

00:58 season, and that tends to be the steering track for storm systems that move across the

01:03 northern tier states.

01:04 Cold fronts extend southward out of those storms.

01:07 You typically get occasional showers and thunderstorms as the fronts move through.

01:11 It's been a little bit different this year in the sense that we've seen a large bridge

01:16 of high pressure in the west, the so-called heat dome, leading to the extreme and record-breaking

01:21 heat out west, while at the same time there's been more of a dip in the jet stream farther

01:25 to the east, much more so than what we would typically see.

01:28 And that's often the way it works with a jet stream.

01:30 When one part of the country, we see the jet goes up, another part of the country it goes

01:33 down, much like a seesaw, and vice versa.

01:35 We saw this last winter with the countless storms that kept slamming into California

01:40 with a dip in the jet stream out west, while all the while the jet stream had lifted farther

01:44 to the north than the east, and it was mild and in many cases almost snowless.

01:48 It's more or less the opposite of what we've seen and are continuing to see this summer.

01:54 That's a good point, Bob.

01:55 And you know, when it comes to a wet summer, of course we've seen those, you have too,

01:59 you've lived here for a long time here in the northeast, but what's a little bit different

02:03 about this really wet and flooded summer compared to maybe other ones?

02:08 Over the years we've all witnessed wet summers, we've witnessed dry summers, where the lawns

02:12 tend to turn brown, particularly during the latter stages of July and August.

02:16 What sets this year apart, in my mind, is the fact that in many parts of the northeast,

02:21 coming out of May and on into June as we were ramping up into the warm weather season, it

02:25 was exceptionally dry.

02:27 Things were drying out very early, much earlier than we typically see it, but rather than

02:31 that evolving into a continuous drought-like summer, it's almost as if we've flipped the

02:36 switch and we've gone from excessive dryness to excessive and relentless rainfall over

02:41 the past several weeks, and we've seen countless examples of flash flooding, serious flash

02:46 flooding a couple weekends ago from Orange County in New York, northward through Vermont

02:50 most recently with the footage we just saw there, the deadly flash flooding in Bucks

02:54 County north of Philadelphia.

02:56 It's just complete turnaround from several weeks ago.

02:59 You got it, Bob.

03:00 Going from one extreme to the other, not exactly the way that we want to live our lives weather-wise,

03:04 but we have to deal with it.

03:05 Bob Larson, AccuWeather regional expert, thank you very much for your time.

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