Nature and Possible Causes of the Northeastern United States Drought During 1962–65

Abstract

During the past 4 years noteworthy weather fluctuations of a persistent kind have occurred over large portions of the United States, the most prominent of which have been the deficiency in precipitation over the Northeast and the excess over the Southwest and the Northern Plains. The nature of these abnormalities is described with the help of seasonal frequency distributions of precipitation determined for 40 climatologically homogeneous areas of the country. From this and other material it is shown that the Northeast drought has been largely a spring and summer phenomenon at the same time when abundant rains occurred over the Northern Plains and Far Southwest.The large-scale upper-air currents favoring or inhibiting precipitation through interactions with air masses and storms are next described. The most consistent year-to-year feature of these upper winds in the quadrennial has been the persistence of one southward dip in the westerlies just off the eastern seaboard and another over the Far Southwest.A hypothesis is proposed for the cause of the aberrant upper-wind currents which considers the atmosphere and ocean as a complex coupled system. Abnormalities of sea-surface temperature are created by anomalous gurface wind drag and by extraction of heat by anomalous air masses. The ocean thus serves as a reservoir whose heat transfer affects sequences of atmospheric systems. An attempt is made to show that a feedback system of this type has been operating efficiently during the past 4 years so as to produce the observed anomalous weather patterns.

The 1960s Drought and the Subsequent Shift to a Wetter Climate in the Catskill Mountains Region of the New York City Watershed*

“…Figure 7 shows the GPCC precipitation, SST, and SLP during the drought. Dry conditions in the greater Catskills region occurred in all seasons with the strongest anomalies in spring as noted by Namias (1966). Winter and summer precipitation anomalies are comparable to those identified in the correlation analysis (Fig.…”

“…However, the ''drought of record'' is one that extended from 1962 to 1966. This drought has received some attention (Namias 1966(Namias , 1983 but not in the recent period of atmospheric reanalyses and extensive simulations with climate models. Its character, causes, and potential predictability are largely unknown.…”

Analysis links Pacific decadal variability to drought and streamflow in United States

“…The severe 1962-1966 drought in the northeast United States [Namias, 1966] had averaged Palmer Index values as high as -3.0.The Pacific SST anomalies, identified by Namias as possibly important to the drought, were quite similar to the North Pacific mode (Figure 2c). The presence of the North Pacific mode in a 5-year average of SST anomalies both validates the modal analysis and highlights the longer timescales of the mode.…”

A Tree-Ring-Based Reconstruction of Delaware River Basin Streamflow Using Hierarchical Bayesian Regression

“…The drought of record in the region is the one from the early to mid 1960s (Namias 1966(Namias , 1967. A similar drought could cause severe stress on regional water resources, given the increased population and services today.…”