Where did all the rain go? Dry October hits the US | News, Sports, Work

FILE. Two bicyclists ride uphill past trees changing their fall colors on October 10, 2024 in Woodstock, Vermont (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

(AP) — A dry October is pushing nearly half of the United States into a sudden drought, sparking wildfires in the Midwest and disrupting navigation on the Mississippi River.

More than 100 different long-term weather stations in 26 states, including Alaska, had their driest October on record through Sunday, according to the Southern Regional Climate Center and Midwest Regional Climate Center. According to the National Weather Service, cities with no measured rain in October include New York, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Sioux City, Iowa, along with typically dry places such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix.

“This is on pace for a record dry October,” said Allison Santorelli, acting warning coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. This includes the South East, some of which had experienced deadly flooding just a month earlier from Hurricane Helen.

In June, less than 12% of the country experienced drought. It is now nearly 50% and growing, according to US Right Monitor.

This fits the definition “sudden drought”, which is different from normal slow dry periods, said USDA meteorologist Brad Rippy, author of the Drought Monitor. A study last year found that global warming from burning coal, oil and gas is causing more frequent and devastating sudden droughts, such as the $30 billion drought that hit America in 2012 and China’s devastating 2022 drought.

One-eighth of the continental United States experienced no rain during the first 28 days of October. About 93 percent of the continental U.S. received below-average rainfall in October, with most receiving less than an inch, according to climate center data analyzed by The Associated Press.

Cities like Washington D.C. are forecast to hit 80 degrees on Halloween, right after Chicago and Detroit flirt with summer-like temperatures. “It’s Wild” at the end of October, said meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, who recalled instances of snow antics in Michigan.

Santorelli said the high-pressure dome is blocking moisture from moving north from the Gulf of Mexico, keeping much of the U.S. dry from the Plains and Midwest to the East Coast.

“We’ve been stuck in this lockdown pattern for almost two months,” said Rippy.

Research over the past decade or so has shown that the jet stream — air currents that move weather systems around the world — is more wavy and gets stuck more often, attributing it to additional human-caused warming of the Arctic climate, Rippey said. What is happening now, especially with the extremely warm Arctic and “hot ocean temperatures in the North Pacific”, fits the theory well, said Woodwell Center for Climate Research senior scientist Jennifer Francis, one of the pioneers of the concept.

Weather systems have been stuck this year “weather blow” in places like Sioux City, where June showers produced so much rain that it destroyed a railroad bridge and forced people to stay on rooftops, said climate scientist Melissa Widhalm, associate director of the Midwest Regional Climate Center at Purdue University.

Asheville, North Carolina, which was devastated by Hurricane Helen, received nearly 14 inches of rain in three days in September, but only one-hundredth of an inch in October.

The Mississippi River, the main transporter of the crop, is at such a low level that navigation has to be limited, Rippy said. According to him, this is the third year in a row that the water level in the river has been problematic. When Helen barreled toward the Southeast in late September and flooded North Carolina and Tennessee, it provided an influx of fresh water that helped restore Mississippi water levels, but it didn’t last, Rippy said.

That could hurt the transportation of agricultural products, but fortunately for farmers, the severe drought occurred after corn and soybeans were harvested, Rippy said.

But the dry fields mean the situation is ripe for wildfires in both the Midwest and the East, Rippi said. According to him, agricultural machinery accidentally caused many fires.

Five large wildfires burned more than 1,000 acres in the East and Midwest on Tuesday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Help is on the way for parts of the Midwest, Santorelli said, as storm systems are forecast to break through from the west Wednesday and Thursday with rain, sometimes heavy. But much of the East and Southeast looks dry for another week, she said.

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