AccuWeather's Geoff Cornish breaks down the conditions leading to spreading drought in the Northeast this October and explains when relief could be on the way.
00:00In tonight's forecast feed, we want to take a very brief one-night break from the tropics to take a look at the need for significant rain in the Northeast.
00:12We've been so dry out there, we're going to try to sniff out an actual weather pattern change beyond the transient relief we're going to see on Tuesday into Wednesday of next week with a quick shot of some rain, but it won't be all that we need.
00:23We really have seen a little bit of relief last week in some areas across the Northeast as we go to the comparison between the beginning of last summer and the new drought monitor that was released today, this Thursday.
00:35You can still see we're in a lot of trouble across much of the area east of the Mississippi River, even into the Ozarks, all the way down to North Florida.
00:43A lot of drought out there in many areas that did not exist back at the beginning of the summer.
00:47We were in great shape in many of these areas where there was an absence of drought and plenty of rain after a very wet May, for example.
00:54We did actually see some temporary relief last week in some parts of the Northeast.
01:00There are areas, for example, that were in moderate drought that are back down to dry, abnormally dry.
01:07Some of these areas here in, say, interior western PA down into northern West Virginia, Garrett County, Maryland.
01:12We had a zone of one to three inches of rain last week that really did help.
01:17Some even saw three to four inches of rain, which somewhat superficially bumped some of us back to a not-so-scary-looking 30-day rainfall departure from normal.
01:27You can actually see some of this corridor here where the rainfall that we did see last week took some of us out of the deep brown and back into the lighter shade of yellow,
01:37and some even close to average for the 30-day departure from normal.
01:41But remember, the 30 days before that were exceptionally dry, so this is just part of the story.
01:46That was kind of a temporary band-aid as the dryness has certainly returned, and we have a very dry pattern continuing through Sunday and Monday across a huge area here from the Central Plains,
01:56even the Southern Plains, all the way up into the Northeast.
01:59Now, we want to head over to the models to show you what is the reason for this recently.
02:04And generally, I'm going to take us to Sunday with the upper-level flow.
02:07So we're looking at the weather pattern up around 20,000 feet into the atmosphere, up where, again, some of the upper-level flow kind of dictates the general flavor of the weather,
02:18the weather pattern, the steering influences for storms and so forth across the Atlantic.
02:22And we've had a strong area of high-pressure return for most of the past week over the Northeast of the Atlantic.
02:27For a period of time, it was up over Canada when Imelda passed to the south, and it has sunk south.
02:33So it's out there for sure.
02:34And other areas of concern, well, we do have a front that's going to be drifting through parts of the Northern Plains here later this weekend.
02:43And we can actually show you the forecast of rainfall through Friday and Saturday.
02:47There's some snow in the Northern Rockies tied to that storm system.
02:50And into Monday, you can see the heavy rain, an inch or two of rain for the Dakotas.
02:56Look at what happens to this.
02:57That feature pulls way north, way, way north.
03:01That area of low-pressure tracks basically right up into Hudson Bay up in Canada.
03:07And it continues to ride around a ridge of high-pressure off the East Coast.
03:11That shunts the bulk of that system to our north.
03:14Now, there's a second disturbance that cuts in from the northern part of the Rockies all the way down to the central part of Canada.
03:20That more aggressively does kind of re-energize the storm system, and it gives us a new opportunity for some rain.
03:26So as we take a look at this, you can see that is going to work in tandem with some convergence off the East Coast.
03:33Some flow of tropical moisture is going to work along with that system to bring us some rain.
03:39It's meaningful rain.
03:40We might see half an inch to an inch down into parts of maybe Charlottesville, Virginia, and up into other areas here a little bit farther to the north.
03:48But overall, that trough kicks through.
03:51And I wanted to point out briefly, when we look for big storms that bring more disruptive rainfall, and in some cases really beneficial rain,
03:59we want actually to see something that's oriented differently.
04:01This is a positive tilt southwest to northeast.
04:04You think back to math class.
04:06Remember, Y equals MX plus B, positive slope or negative slope.
04:09This is a positively tilted trough southwest to northeast.
04:12And these tend to be maybe a little more timid, and they're not going to bring as much rain.
04:16So that system exits.
04:18And look at where it returns.
04:19Strong high pressure comes right back into the picture.
04:22And that's going to be bringing us another period of dry weather for the second half of next week through the following weekend.
04:28We have a coastal storm that misses us offshore.
04:30And then as we look farther out, I'm going to go back to the flow aloft here.
04:33Look at this.
04:34This is Wednesday the 15th.
04:36Thursday the 16th.
04:36We're two weeks out.
04:38Strong high pressure over the Ohio Valley.
04:41But what follows that becomes a really deep trough.
04:44And we haven't seen a trough like this set in for some time.
04:47That's a beefy zone of low pressure.
04:50And this is the kind of thing that can sometimes signal a weather pattern change.
04:54In fact, look at this.
04:55This is the omega block.
04:57We have low pressure to the west, low pressure to the east.
05:01And this type of pattern can often be one that produces this kind of flow.
05:05I'm going to try to pick something other than white so you can see it.
05:08We got this.
05:09This is a blocking pattern.
05:11And this kind of thing could be favorable because around the 18th to maybe the 20th, 22nd or so of October,
05:18we could begin to see frequent rounds of rain.
05:20This is the kind of thing where the west to east flow of the atmosphere begins to break down.
05:24And you get storm systems to stall.
05:26Big picture, the European weekly forecast.
05:29You could see near normal amounts of precipitation for the week ending next weekend.
05:34But we go back to dry weather following that.
05:37And then into the third to fourth week of October, maybe this is a result of that blocking pattern.
05:44Low pressure frequently bringing us some showers here at the end of the month.
05:48So we may have a period of time where we actually have slightly above average precipitation for a few days.
05:52I'm going to go back to summarize this and show you.
05:55I'll get myself out of the way here so you can see more clearly.
05:59Headlines.
06:00Seeking drought relief.
06:01We're raining bone dry through Monday.
06:03Less than an inch of rain for most of us Tuesday, Wednesday.
06:05Maybe a little band-aid, but not much drought relief.
06:08Back to dry weather through mid-October.
06:10And then a beneficial pattern change should follow for the second part of the month of October.
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