(Bloomberg) — As the western U.S. bakes and burns under an unprecedented heat dome, Henri leaves a deluged East Coast staggering after a summer of deadly floods and record-setting tropical storms. Climate scientists say one is due to the other. Both come against the backdrop of a warming planet.
The high pressure that got stuck across the West, causing drought and fire, actually created the conditions for low-pressure-driven storms in the East. So while July was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth, it was the sixth wettest in U.S. records going back 127 years, according to the National Centers for Environment Information.
Heat in both the Pacific and the Atlantic has helped strengthen large high-pressure systems, said Jim Rouiller, lead meteorologist at the Energy Weather Group. In the West, this has added to the drought and wildfires; in the East, it has steered tropical systems up the coast and kept the region warm and moist. In between has been a low-pressure trough that has kept the rain falling across the central and eastern U.S.
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