2022 Lightning Strikes Reveal National Weather....

 When climatologists do deep dives in how a climate might or might not be changing, they look at lightning strikes. 

Lightning activity, or the lack thereof, can tell us where droughts are developing, where droughts are ending and where severe weather is moving, changing or just being weird. 

A weather and environmental monitoring company called Vaisala Xweather compiled an analysis of lightning in the United States in 2022 into an annual report, something the company has done since at least 2015. 

Vaisala said lightning zapped in the United States a total of more than 198 million times in 2022. The state with the most strikes was Texas, with just under 30 million. 

As the Washington Post reports:

"Recently released U.S. lightning data by weather and environmental monitoring company Vaisala Xweather showed portions of the Midwest and Texas - typical lightning hot spots - had a weaker display of activity in 2022 compared to its recent average. The lack of lightning was a signal itself of atypical weather across the country last year, including major drought across the Mississippi River basin."

The Washington Post explains why lightning data is important:

"Lightning detection is like measuring a person's reflexes: The system can appear normal overall, but certain areas may show more signs of struggle than others. That's what happened in 2022. After back to back years of concerning low activity in 2021 and 2020, the total number of lightning strikes was closer to average. Still, pockets of the country showed record low or high activity in ways that left researchers surprised."

Lightning was below average in the Mississippi River basin. Which is bad, because that area receives about half its annual rainfall from thunderstorms.  It was the third consecutive year with below average lightning activity in that region. 

The Mississippi River fell to nearly record low levels in the autumn. Simply measuring rainfall is of course the obvious way to figure out whether you're in a drought. But lightning data can help show what type of rainfall was lacking. 

The dearth of lightning meant that the downpours usually associated with thunderstorms was lacking. Since torrential rains are more likely to flow into rivers, that provides more evidence as to why the Mississippi was so low.  

Other areas had a lot of lightning. 

Florida, due to its geography and climate gets zapped with tons of lightning strikes each year. However, 2022 was an especially busy year for lightning in Florida. They had 33 percent more lightning compared with the 2015-2021 average, says WaPo

Part of the problem was Hurricane Ian, that intense storm that caused $60 billion in damage. 

Hurricanes don't usually produce all that much lightning, but this one did. At its peak, it was producing lightning every three seconds in the hurricane's eyewall. 

The eyewall is a circle of especially intense winds surrounding the calm eye of a hurricane.  

Most of the extra lightning strikes across Florida, though, were just due to a busy summer thunderstorm season that was even more active than usual. 

Another state that saw an increase in lightning over previous years was Arizona. In mid to late summer, humid winds from the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean are drawn toward Arizona by low pressure created by summer heat.

That creates what is known as a monsoon season, in which thunderstorms frequently erupt in the Desert Southwest. Contrary to recent years, the Arizona monsoon season was more active than usual

Another very weird lightning hot spot was around Buffalo, New York during their epic Christmas lake effect blizzard. A good 1,0000 lightning strikes were detected during the blizzard over three and a half days, which is more lightning than anyone can recall in such a weather pattern.

Climate change is blamed for just about everything that goes wrong in the weather and elsewhere. However, so far at least, there are no discernible overall trends in lightning frequency in the United States because of climate change.

VERMONT LIGHTNING

Here in Vermont, we don't have a lot of lightning, compared to many other places east of the Rocky Mountains. 

Given the Green Mountain State's relatively small size and fairly low level of thunderstorm activity, we had the four least amount of lightning of all the states and the District of Columbia.

Vaisala detected 62,954 lightning strikes in Vermont during 2022. Only Rhode Island, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia had less lightning during the year. 

Overall, lightning activity during 2022 in Vermont was near or a little below average. In 2021 Vermont saw 71,264 lightning strikes.

Maybe a better way to measure how Vermont and other states rank is lightning density, which Vaisala defines as events per square kilometer. Measured that way, Vermont ranked 43rd in the nation in terms of lightning density. 

For fun, Vaisala nominates the lightning capitals of each state. It's where lightning was detected the most. In Vermont, this year's lightning capital was Danby. In 2021, Vermont's lightning capital was Ripton. So you see it's pretty random. 

Speaking of random, it's interesting that the highest lightning density in Vermont in 2021 was in central parts of the state, with less north and south. In 2022, it was just the opposite, with somewhat higher lightning density south and north, with lesser amounts in central Vermont.  

Massive Pakistani Flood Might Be Worst Of This Year's Epic Floods

Screen grab of extreme floods roaring
through a Pakistani city recently.

Epic heat waves and epic floods have been in the news all year. Pakistan has had the worst of both. 

After months of record heat in March through early June, Pakistan is enduring some of its worst flooding on record.  It's certainly the worst of the mega floods we've seen globally in 2022. 

The official death toll in Pakistan is nearing 1,000, but has already probably exceeded that figure. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their homes. Many more have faced evacuations and other hazards. 

The Pakistani floods have affected more than 30 million people since July. Pakistan's climate change ministers said the situation is a "climate-induced humanitarian disaster of epic proportions," reports Reuters.

Social media videos shows immense rushes of water collapsing buildings or simply sweeping them quickly away.

As Al Jazeera reports:

"Fida Hussain Shahani, a laborer from a remote village in Sindh, is grieving for his son who was swept away in the deluge. 

'Yesterday, the flood water kept rising and entered our house. While trying to reach high ground, my 17 year old son was left behind. I only managed to find his body this morning,' Shahani said from Shahani village on Friday.

The 42-year old says his family of 12 has not been provided with any relief or aid from the government and only volunteers came to his help. 

He said the magnitude of this year's rains was unprecedented. 'Things were not so bad in the 2010 floods. We never had to leave our village but this time, everything is destroyed,' he said."

The monsoon season in Pakistan usually causes at least some flooding.  In a typical year, the monsoon comes in three or four waves, each with a spell of torrential rains.  This year, they've already had eight cycles and might have a ninth in September. All this extra water has turned seasonal floods into an epic disaster. 

The floods come after immense heat waves that effectively canceled spring in Pakistan and brought them right into the heat of summer, starting in March. The heat caused water shortages, power outages and temperatures as high as 122 degrees. 

The heat also melted glaciers high up in the Himalayas, causing water and debris flows that destroyed homes and bridges in higher elevations. I guess that was a preview to the monsoon season. 

International aid is flowing into Pakistan.  Even that will be problematic, though. The country has corruption, pockets of hard line Islamic militancy and remote areas with poor communication.  How much of this aid will actual get to the people who need it?

Disaster responses, handled poorly, can easily lead to additional political unrest. Which is precisely what the world does NOT need right now. 

If climate change leads to more disasters, and some of the responses to these are inept or worse, you can see how the world's tenuous stability can disappear fast. 

Climate change doesn't cause just bad weather. It can start wars. A flood isn't the only way people die from the climate crisis. 

 

Desert Storm: Southwest U.S. Flash Floods Amid A Punishing Drought

Wreckage of a road destroyed by flash
flooding this summer in Death Valley

The Desert Southwest is proving in spectacular fashion that you can have a punishing drought and intense flash floods simultaneously. Especially in that part of the world. 

A full 70 percent of the nation's westernmost states are in drought. 

In Arizona, 85 percent of the state is listed as being in drought as of last week, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. That's a tiny bit better than the 98 percent of the state being in drought three months ago, but still. 

Just this week, we learned there will be more cuts to water usage from the Colorado River due to the long lasting, crushing drought. 

Yet, we've been seeing news of flash floods for a good month now, especially in Arizona, the deserts of southern California, parts of Utah and places in and around Las Vegas.

The floods have been impressive in spots. Recently,  Furnace Creek in Death Valley recorded 1.46 inches of rain, just 0.01 inches short of the record. The more impressive statistic is that Death Valley on average only gets about two inches of rain per year, so they received 75 percent the normal yearly allotment in just a few hours. 

About 1,000 employees and visitors to the park were stranded there until roads could be cleared in a day or so. The park's emergency services building and some residences also flooded.

In Las Vegas, torrential rain overloaded streets and roof drains. Water gushed from the electronic odds board at Cirq. Water poured from the ceiling at Planet Hollywood and Caesar's Palace, but gamblers there kept at the slot machines even as water poured down on them. Sigh. This has happened more than once this summer in Las Vegas.

Last weekend, three inches of rain in normally arid Scottsdale, Arizona, caused a lot of damaging floods. There's also been quite a bit of flooding in Phoenix this summer.  Debris flows from burn scars have damaged neighborhoods in and around Flagstaff, Arizona.

It might even get worse. Parts of Arizona and New Mexico have a high likelihood of flash flooding today and tomorrow as a new surge of moisture comes in. 

It's monsoon season in the Desert Southwest. The deserts heat up big time in early summer. That hot air rises, creating low pressure. Nature hates a vacuum, so air is pulled in from the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico to replace that hot air that rose and dissipated.

The Pacific and Gulf of Mexico are obviously wet, so the flowing into the Desert Southwest is humid. This sets off daily thunderstorms, some of which are pretty intense.

The monsoon happens every summer.  Some years, the moisture is paltry.  Some years, like now, you get a lot of humid days and heavy thunderstorms.  

A forecast issued today shows drought conditions 
improving this fall in places like Arizona (green shading)
but persisting through huge areas of the West (in brown).

The rain comes in short, sharp bursts, and the landscape doesn't absorb these downpours easily. Flash flood result.

Of course, the rain does help. NOAA's Seasonal Drought Outlook, just released this morning, predicts drought conditions will ease or even disappear in parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas between now and November.

However, that same outlook indicates drought will persist in virtually all of California, Nevada and most of Utah. 

The local hit and miss downpours in the Desert Southwest only do so much to put a dent in the drought.  

What's really needed are a series of winters with widespread, frequent storms that dump lots of snow on the mountain peaks.  Then that snow would gradually melt in the spring and early summer, replenishing rivers and reservoirs. 

There's no guarantee of that, of course. 

By the way, the drought out west is not just their problem. It affects you and me. Cutbacks in irrigation cause crop losses, helping to drive up grocery prices at Price Chopper, Shaw's Hannaford and Walmart. 

The drought also creates a need for federal resources to supply water to drought stricken areas, extinguish large wildfires and build infrastructure to save and conserve water. That's your tax dollars at work.