Tropical Storm Warning Henri made landfall in Rhode Island yesterday afternoon with 60 mph winds, marking it the state’s first named storm in 30 years.
In the Northeast, where most hurricane-force storms fade over cooler waters or are pushed into the Atlantic by easterly winds, this was an uncommon occurrence.
By the time they approach Northern states, those that do strike are nearly seldom big storms.
Henri brought severe rain and power interruptions to New England from New York and New Jersey.
Between 10 and 11 p.m. on Saturday night, New York City received 1.94 inches of rain, making it the wettest single hour in recorded history.
Over the weekend, Henri took an unconventional route, which had an impact on him.
On Saturday, as it traveled north toward the New England coast, it grew stronger and briefly became a hurricane.
It was downgraded to a tropical storm before hitting the coast yesterday morning.
Henri is a tremendous storm amid a summer distinguished by unprecedented weather occurrences, from record-breaking heat waves in the western United States to devastating floods in Europe, China, and India.
Many of these severe events, according to scientists, have been influenced by climate change and provide views into the future of a warming world.
Is this the reason for Henri’s strange behavior?
Both yes and no.
Tropical cyclones are migrating closer to the poles, according to scientists.
Storms are moving further north in portions of the Northern Hemisphere as the oceans warm.
But, as scientists dig more into the story, they discover that the impacts aren’t the same everywhere or for every storm.
In the western North Pacific, for example, scientists have noticed a distinct poleward movement of hurricanes. However, the tendency in the Atlantic is significantly smaller.
According to James Kossin, a senior scientist with the analytics business of the Climate Service and a researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who has studied storm poleward migration, this is likely due to complicating variables in the Atlantic Ocean basin.
Ocean temperatures in the Atlantic were heavily influenced by significant air pollution from Europe and North America for much of the twentieth century.
Pollution may temper the local climate, and experts believe it masked some of the effects of global warming in the area.
For decades, hurricane activity was likely reduced.
New air quality standards were implemented at the turn of the century, and pollution began to drop.
The ocean began to warm, and hurricane activity resumed.
As a result of this chain of events, some long-term storm patterns in the Atlantic are less defined than in other ocean basins.
For the time being, it’s unclear whether the Atlantic will see more wandering hurricanes in the next decades than other sections of the globe.
In Henri’s instance, a unique collection of circumstances aligned at precisely the correct time.
Henri was driven north up the coast by the combined powers of a high-pressure system on one side of the storm and a low-pressure system on the other.
The storm would have veered back out to sea in normal circumstances.
To put it another way, Henri’s strange track is a bit of a fluke.
Hurricanes Bob, which impacted southern New England in 1991, and Gloria, which hit Long Island in 1985, were both able to make landfall in the Northeast due to similar circumstances.
Sandy, which wreaked havoc on New York and New Jersey in 2012, was also the result of exceptional circumstances.
As Sandy approached the East Coast, it clashed with a spinning low-pressure system.
It careened westward onto the New Jersey shoreline as a result of this.
Even if these Northeastern landfalls remain relatively rare in the future, climate change will inevitably make them more dangerous.
For one thing, the East Coast’s sea levels are increasing.
The impact of storm surge and the potential of destructive floods grows with time, regardless of where a hurricane strikes.
Warmer ocean temperatures also give hurricanes a boost as they travel across the sea from Africa, increasing their chances of becoming catastrophic storms.
According to research, hurricanes are becoming more powerful on average as the climate warms.
Warmer waters in the Northeast could imply that stray storms like Henri have a better chance of remaining hurricane-force as they move north.
Even if their chances of making landfall remain slim, the ones that do may pose greater dangers.
Warm waters aided Henri’s progress, according to Kossin.
As Henri chugged nearer the shore, sea surface temperatures off the coasts of New York and New England were several degrees warmer than typical.
In an email to E&E News, Kossin stated, “It’s not apparent that climate change is playing a role in Henri’s peculiar course, but it may play a role in Henri’s intensity at higher latitudes.”
Ocean waters off the coast of the United States are heating up faster than the worldwide norm, according to NOAA records.
They are, in fact, among the fastest-warming waters in the United States.
“[I]t’s a categorical assertion that all other things being equal, greater water temperatures at higher altitudes along the coast will allow storms to live longer as they migrate northward,” Kossin noted.
The author is: Chelsea Harvey is a reporter with E&E News.
