Mid-Atlantic Climate Impacts Summary and Outlook: Fall 2021

MARISA Mid-Atlantic Regional Climate Summary map and title

Tropical Storm Ida brought significant rainfall and its remnants produced multiple damaging tornadoes. Temperatures were warmer than normal across the region, with moderate drought in southeastern Virginia.

Read more about regional climate trends, and how the changing definition of a climate normal affects our interpretation of future climate changes, in the latest MARISA Seasonal Climate Impacts Summary and Outlook.

Highlights

Tropical Storm Ida brought significant rainfall to the region with the greatest rainfall totals in the watershed ranging from 5 to 8 inches in parts of central and northern Maryland and central and eastern Pennsylvania.
Temperatures were on average a bit above normal across the region for the fall season, due to a warmer September and October but a generally cooler November.
Central and northern parts of the region experienced above-normal precipitation, while southern parts experienced below-normal precipitation.
Abnormal dryness persisted through November in portions of Virginia and southern Maryland and moderate drought was introduced in southeastern Virginia.
In an analysis of future differences from normal temperature, the use of the 1981–2010 "old" normal shows over a half-degree greater increase in future average annual temperature compared to the newly-released 1991–2020 normal.

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, Johns Hopkins University, the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Morgan State University, and Carnegie Mellon University.