U.S. ‘Extreme Weather’ In 2022 ‘Pretty Normal’

Written by ROGER PIELKE JR. on December 15, 2022. Posted in Current News

How ‘extreme’ was the weather in the United States in 2022? Not very.

Of course, the year is not over, and more ‘extreme weather’ will yet occur, but most of the year has passed and it is not too early to look back at how 2022 looks in a historical context.

I wanted to get this out before NOAA blasts out its “billion-dollar disaster” press kit, along with the implication that damage from disasters tells us something about extreme weather.

If you want to understand trends in extreme weather, look at weather data, not economic data.

In a few words, ‘extreme weather’ in 2022 in the U.S. has been pretty normal. Some extreme weather phenomena occurred at a rate or intensity greater than historical averages, but many occurred less.

There have been and there will again be many years with far more ‘extreme weather’ than we’ve seen in 2022.

In this post, I share a range of extreme weather phenomena 10 graphs, and links to original data sources for those who’d like to dive deeper. For those who want a summary first, here is what I document below:

• Extreme temperatures — [slightly] higher than the historical average
• Drought — above average this century, not as pronounced longer-term
• Tropical Cyclones — average to below average
• Tornadoes — Below average (since 2005)
• Hail — Below average (since 2005)
• Strong winds — above average (since 2005)
• Fire — Average (since 2000)
• Flooding and Extreme Precipitation — Data not yet available, but appears average

Let’s jump right into the data.

Extreme temperatures

The graphs below (via NOAA) show U.S. maximum temperature trends for the past 100 years for the continuous U.S. states for June, July, and August, arranged from top to bottom. In each month of the summer of 2022, U.S. maximum temperatures were higher than the long-term average.

June is ranked 14th of the past 100 years, July 7th, and August 17th.

You can also see that there is a slight upward trend for June, no trend for July, and a small trend for August. Of course, one can arrive at different trends by starting the analysis at different points.

Generally, trends will be much smaller if the period analyzed includes the 1930s — which were very extreme — and much larger if they start in the relatively cooler 1960s.

Drought

The year to date has seen a somewhat higher level of drought as compared to the post-2000 period, which you can see on the far right in the graph below.

The plot below integrates severity and areal extent and you can see that 2022 sits near the upper end of drought levels observed this century, but one would find it difficult to identify a strong trend over this short period.

The graph below shows a much longer-term perspective for the contiguous U.S. over the past 100 years. Under this metric (the Palmer Drought Severity Index), drought across the lower 48 has decreased a bit on that time scale, but the trend is small. Once again, the 1930s heavily influence any longer-term trend analysis.

Another perspective can be found in the graph below, which shows the proportion of the U.S. that is abnormally dry or abnormally wet.

Again, there is little hint of strong trends in the data, but there is some reason to believe that 2022 saw fewer areas of extreme wetness than observed earlier this century and throughout the longer-term record.

Tropical Cyclones

In an earlier post, I documented how the 2022 North Atlantic hurricane season underperformed compared to seasonal forecasts published earlier this year.

You can see that in the graph of cumulative ACE below (via Colorado State University). ACE refers to Accumulated Cyclone Energy and integrates the intensity and frequency of storm activity.

Most metrics of North Atlantic hurricane activity were close to average or below average, as you can see in the table below (via Colorado State University).

However, the number of continental U.S. landfalls was at the long-term average for both all hurricanes (2 vs. an average of 1.8, since 1900) and major hurricanes (1 vs an average of 0.6).

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