by Northern News Now meteorologist Dave Anderson
Meteorologically minded people are calling 2025 the year of the flood. National Weather Service records indicate it hasn’t been this wet since 1986. Powerful floods have hit places like Texas and we’ve seen a few deluges, too, but luckily not as badly as those places down south. The culprit is increased humidity pumping into the U.S. by the Bermuda High.
At the LSC Center for Advanced Aviation, I teach future pilots that low pressure means rain and high pressure means fair weather – most of the time. Our globe has big stripes of high pressure at the poles and 30 degrees of latitude. Big stripes of low pressure are found at the equator and 60 degrees of latitude. Close to those stripes we have semi-permanent circulating cells of high and low pressure. The most common for American weather are the Aleutian Low and the Bermuda High. The Bermuda High spins clockwise. The backside of that flow is pushing lots of Gulf moisture into our nation this summer.
It seems counter-intuitive that high pressure is making us stormier but the Bermuda High is only the start of the “year of the flood”. Migratory lows work through our latitudes and that extra moisture is lifted up by them to make clouds and copious amounts of rain.
August will likely continue the wet conditions. Long range forecasters think we’ll be two degrees warmer than normal and we’ll get about a half inch more than normal rain. August 1 to 7 should be near normal with a few thunderstorm days. The 8th to 14th will be warm and stormy. The 15th to 21st will be warm but drier. The 22nd to 31st will be warm and stormy again.
I myself hope it dries up a little. I’ve got a little property in the Sax-Zim Bog and it’s been soupy and awfully buggy all summer long.
