Vermont resident for 42 years and I’ve never noticed a hurricane behave this way. Sure, every decade or two we’ll get one that’ll ride up the east coast and cause problems for New England…
But for one to strike the gulf coast, ride all the way up (over land!) to the northeast and still drop 4-6” of rain, is something I can’t wrap my head around.
I’m used to storms hitting the south and then breaking up rather quickly over land. What was so different about Beryl?
I’m just curious, this is the 2nd 100-year flood we’ve had in back-to-back years, right down to the day… it’s crazy…
In: Planetary Science
Something to consider is that after hitting land, Beryl gradually changed to something called a post-tropical cyclone. This type of storm gets its energy not from warm ocean water, as a hurricane does, but from the collision of air masses of different temperatures. This is actually fairly common for hurricane that find their way northwards, and many do bring rain to the northeastern US in this way. I can remember some intense thunderstorms from the remnants of Dennis back in 2005. The storm pulls a lot of moist air up from the Gulf of Mexico, pushing it into cooler air. This forces it upward and causes it to drop that moisture as rain.
A lot of post-tropical cyclones have major impacts, but what areas bear the brunt can be a toss-up. Looking at recent history, the post-tropical remnants of Hurricane Ida brought major flooding and tornadoes to the Mid Atlantic. Looking farther back, Hurricane Hazel brought significant flooding to parts of Canada as a post-tropical cyclone in 1954.
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