Chesapeake Bay Watershed Climate Impacts Summary and Outlook

The MARISA Seasonal Climate Impacts Summary and Outlook is a seasonal series produced by NOAA’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments program that details seasonal weather and climate variability and change in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.

  • Chesapeake Bay Watershed Climate Impacts Summary and Outlook: Winter 2019-2020

    Mar 23, 2020

    An unusually mild winter saw low snowfall levels in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, and Baltimore's first February without snow in more than a century of recordkeeping.

  • Chesapeake Bay Watershed Climate Impacts Summary and Outlook: Fall 2019

    Dec 17, 2019

    A warm and dry September and October turned to a colder-than-usual November in many locations in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. September 2019 also ranked among the top ten all-time driest months for Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

  • Chesapeake Bay Watershed Climate Impacts Summary and Outlook: Summer 2019

    Sep 18, 2019

    Summer 2019 brought flash flooding to some parts of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, while other areas experienced as little as 50 percent of normal rainfall. July was also among the 10 warmest months on record for several locations.

  • Damage caused by a tornado in Charles City, Virginia, on April 19, 2019. Photo by National Weather Service

    Chesapeake Bay Watershed Climate Impacts Summary and Outlook: Spring 2019

    Jun 13, 2019

    The spring season saw almost 40 tornadoes touch down across the Chesapeake Bay region, including a record-breaking tally of 16 tornadoes in a single day in Virginia. Spring temperatures were above average for most of the watershed, and some areas experienced rainfall of up to 200 percent of historical averages.

  • Great Blue Heron on a frozen jetty on the Chesapeake Bay, photo by flownaksala / Getty Images

    Chesapeake Bay Watershed Climate Impacts Summary and Outlook: Winter 2018-2019

    Mar 25, 2019

    From December 2018 through February 2019, extreme weather events caused disruptions, delays, and damages within the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. A December snowstorm dropped up to 15.2 inches of snow on western and central Virginia, while a January storm caused more than 250 flight cancellations at Washington D.C.'s three main airports. In late January, a polar vortex resulted in cold, windy weather across the Mid-Atlantic region.

  • A crew works to repair a road destroyed by flooding on May 31, 2018 in Ellicott City, Maryland. On May 27 Ellicott City experienced a devastating flood for the second time in two years.

    Chesapeake Bay Watershed Climate Impacts Summary and Outlook for 2018

    Nov 27, 2018

    The first in a seasonal series, this summary draws information from other regional climate centers, news and weather information, regionally-specific climate datasets and the best available science on projected future climate impacts to present useful information for Chesapeake Bay Watershed policymakers, practitioners, residents, and community leaders. This edition also includes an in-depth analysis on multi-decadal changes in extreme precipitation events.