From flooding to hurricane to blizzard, it’s been a year of extreme weather

The nation’s capital is bracing for record-breaking snow this weekend, the likes of which Washington, D.C., hasn’t seen in more than 90 years. The snowfall, which could get as deep as 30 inches by Sunday, could “be one for the record books,” said CNN meteorologist Tom Sater.

As the National Weather Service was issuing winter warnings for the East Coast, scientists announced that 2015 was the hottest year on record for the world — the second-warmest for the United States.

And that announcement came just a few days after Hurricane Alex took shape in the northeast Atlantic, a solid six months before the traditional start of the hurricane season.

According to the National Hurricane Center, Alex was the first Atlantic hurricane to form in January since 1938.

The weather’s been odd and wacky lately.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the last year has served up one notable meteorological extreme after another, from extended droughts and severe flooding close to home to that record heat and an outbreak of wackadoodle weather — ice storms and hurricanes — around Thanksgiving.

About that record-breaking heat: Last summer was the warmest recorded for the entire planet in 135 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Then, it was so warm in the first 16 days of December that nearly 6,000 daily warmth records were tied or broken in the United States, the Weather Channel reports. People actually mowed their lawns in Milwaukee.

December was both the hottest and the wettest since record-keeping began.

Mary Knapp monitors weather around the globe, and closer to home, from her offices at Kansas State University in Manhattan, where she works as the assistant state climatologist.

The oddest weather in Kansas last year was an outbreak of twisters right before Thanksgiving, rare for November, said Knapp. It ruined an otherwise quiet season. “We had a relatively light tornado season in Kansas until that November outbreak,” she said.

The multiday outbreak began on Nov. 16 when three EF3 tornadoes slammed into parts of the Texas panhandle and the southwest corner of Kansas. One destroyed a Halliburton plant outside of Pampa, Texas.

In just three days, an estimated 53 tornadoes twisted their way through the Plains and the Southeast.

Before that, in May, heavy rains caused a lot of flooding in parts of the Sunshine State, creating “the beginning of the end of the drought,” said Knapp. “We started out the year with a lot of the state in moderate to severe drought, and when we started getting the rains in May that made for major improvements in those conditions.

“It took a while. May wasn’t enough to erase it. But it started the pattern that allowed us to have a significant recovery. We ended the year with less than one-third of the state in drought.”

Parts of the state, she said, “were very wet.”

So were eastern and southern sections of Missouri, which experienced historic flooding in December, the brunt of extreme weather that swept the area.

Last year’s record-breaking heat might sound like the handiwork of global warming. But Knapp said that’s a tough call to make.

“The problem when you talk global climate is that people forget to realize that the manifestation on a local basis can be quite different,” Knapp said.

“So what you get is localized impact of global patterns. You can have global warming, but you can have parts of the globe that are actually getting cooler.”

Scientists blame the bulk of 2015’s record warmth on greenhouse gases heating up the Earth. “The whole system is warming up, relentlessly,” said Gerald A. Meehl, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.　

Right now, climatologists like Knapp are focused on El Nino, a weather phenomenon that happens every two to seven years when winds shift and the water in the central Pacific Ocean along the equator becomes warmer than normal. The warmer the water, the stronger El Nino will grow.

The current El Nino, described as one of the largest in a century, helped Hurricane Alex take shape. It’s also partly responsible for last year’s record heat because it dumped a huge amount of heat from the Pacific Ocean into the atmosphere.

“It is a very strong event that is having a major impact on the West Coast,” said Knapp. “And we’re benefiting from that with our weather pattern and milder temperatures.

“But there are some patterns that suggest that El Nino might revert into a La Nina phase. For us, a La Nina is not as positive. It is more strongly correlated with hot, dry conditions, particularly in our late summer and early fall. So we’re watching to see how that plays out.”

A La Nina will typically set off more violent weather in North America, including tornado outbreaks.

Right now, “they really can’t predict what the severe storm season will be like. They’re trying to get some idea,” said Knapp.

But that’s getting ahead of things.

There is still winter ahead, which prompted Knapp to recommend that everyone carry an emergency weather kit — shovel, energy bars, flashlight and the like — in their car and know where to get user-friendly weather information.

A few sources she recommended: The NOAA website, K-State’s Mesonet website; NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center and COCORAHS.org, where volunteers across the nation report snowfalls, rainfalls and hail amounts in their neck of the woods. Areas in both Kansas and Missouri need volunteers.

This story was originally published January 21, 2016 at 1:20 PM with the headline "From flooding to hurricane to blizzard, it’s been a year of extreme weather."