Mid-Atlantic Climate Impacts Summary and Outlook: Fall 2020

MARISA Mid-Atlantic Regional Climate Summary map and title

Fall 2020 brought higher than normal temperatures, a wide range of precipitation patterns, and damaging conditions from Hurricane Isaias and Tropical Storm Fay.

Read more, and use an interactive tool to explore the path of hurricanes reaching Mid-Atlantic states from 1980 to 2020 in the latest MARISA Seasonal Climate Impacts Summary and Outlook.

Highlights

This fall saw a wide range of precipitation conditions; the northern portions of the Chesapeake Bay watershed had an abnormally dry season, while the southern and eastern portions of the watershed experienced above normal precipitation.
The majority of the Mid-Atlantic region experienced higher than normal temperatures, particularly due to a warmer than average November.
This fall ranked among the five warmest on record for Scranton, Pennsylvania; Dulles Airport and Norfolk, Virginia; and Salisbury, Maryland.
Post-tropical cyclone Sally, Tropical Storm Eta and Tropical Storm Zeta interacted with frontal systems to produce heavy rainfall in portions of the Mid-Atlantic this fall.
Hurricane Isaias and Tropical Storm Fay were the most damaging storms to reach the Mid-Atlantic region in the 2020 hurricane season.
In the Mid-Atlantic, the years from 2000–2020 saw nearly twice as many hurricanes as the preceding two decades—1980–2000.

Read the Climate Summary

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 Mid-Atlantic region.

MARISA is led by the non-profit RAND Corporation, in partnership with researchers in Penn State University’s Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, and the Environment, Energy, Sustainability and Health Institute at Johns Hopkins University, along with support from researchers in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University, and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.