Key Facts Of The Day 12/3

Hurricanes

• The Big Island Summits of Hawai’i are under a Winter Storm Watch from Friday evening through late Saturday night with heavy snow possible.

• On Thursday afternoon, the National Weather Service in Honolulu issued a flood advisory for areas of East Hawaiʻi.

  • Minor flooding on roads, poor drainage areas, and in streams is expected.

• After a summer of extreme heat, Seattle, Washington broke its fall rain record with nearly 19 inches of rain between September and the end of November.

• Forecasters are keeping an eye on two storm systems that could move across the northern U.S. during the next six days, but they say it’s too early to predict whether New Jersey will get any snow from these storms.

  • The first storm system will likely bring rain showers to New Jersey late Sunday into Monday.

• Over $1 billion of Duke Energy’s storm recovery costs incurred during the catastrophic hurricanes Florence, Michael and Dorian, and Winter Storm Diego in North Carolina in 2018-19 are to be paid for by customers over the next 20 years.

  • The devastation caused by these catastrophic storms required a complete rebuild of parts of the electrical system in order to restore power to customers.

Wildfires

• As of Friday, there are currently 13 large active wildfires that have burned 105,279 acres across AK, CA, KY, MT, NC, OK, and WV. As of Friday, 54,350 wildfires have burned 6,802,729 acres across the country.

  • As of Friday, the KNP Complex fire burned 88,307 acres and was 80% contained.

• Officials imposed a ban on burning as Halifax County, Virginia moves into a severe drought phase.

• Father-daughter team from Colorado provides around 100 RVs to people who lost homes in California wildfires.

• Late season wildfires in Montana led to the destruction of a local family’s home.

• Wildfire potential to remain high this month in Montana, Carolinas, and Hawaii.

Extreme Heat

• An early winter intense heatwave shattered daily and monthly temperature records in the U.S.

  • Washington, Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota have tied or broken records for the hottest temperatures seen during December.

  • Winter is the fastest-warming season across the U.S., and the lingering warmth is shortening the snow season in places like Colorado and Montana, where mountain snowpack is a critical source of water during the summer months.

  • Temperatures across the Plains, portions of the Rockies and Central states are running as much as 35°F above average for this time of year.

• The continued dryness expanded or intensified drought in parts of the southern to central Rockies, Great Plains, Lower to Mid-Mississippi Valley, Southeast, and Mid-Atlantic states, as well as Puerto Rico.

• 87% of North Carolina and 73% of South Carolina are under drier than normal conditions. 17% of North Carolina and 12% of South Carolina are under severe drought.

  • Drought conditions are also worsening in wildfire-prone areas of North Carolina just inland of the Outer Banks.

• For the first time in nine months, extreme drought covers Denver, Colorado and parts of the Front Range and eastern plains.

  •  November was the third warmest and ninth driest on record for Denver.

• California water agencies that serve 27 million residents won’t get any water they’ve requested from the state heading into 2022 except to meet health and safety needs.

• Yuba County, California Water Agency could sell and ship billions of gallons of water to the Bay Area amid drought.

New Reports And Data

• A December 2021 study found that drought frequency and severity are projected to increase in the future, but be unevenly distributed.

• A December 2021 report found that there is a dramatic shift in the way rain falls in the U.S., with some areas experiencing more rain than usual and others waiting longer to see any rain at all.

• A December 2021 study found that the impact of plastics on the climate and health is greater than thought due to the increased use of coal for process heat, electricity and as a raw material in production.