2021: A year full of extreme weather events

The 60-minute special "2021: A Year of Extremes," hosted by AccuWeather meteorologist Geoff Cornish, examines the many extreme weather events of 2021 and includes information from AccuWeather's signature series, "Our Changing World," on how climate change played a role. Catch the full show above in its entirety.

From the historic February freeze in Texas to the catastrophic December tornado outbreak across the South and Midwest, 2021 had more than its fair share of impactful weather events, and some of the more notable ones bear the thumbprint of climate change, according to climate experts.

While the level of confidence can vary between types of weather events and their association with climate change, there are a few indicators that generally catch the eyes of meteorologists. And when looking at the weather events from this year, the changing climate's fingerprints were numerous.

"One of the things I think that stands out from this year is just how many [extreme weather events] there have been that have a climate connection...but when you look at the order of magnitude of these extreme events and how frequently they're coming it's really stressing out systems," Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at Climate Central said in an interview with the AccuWeather Network. "It's stressing out people's health and livelihood all the way down through economies."

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The intense heat wave that swept across the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia is a prime example of a weather event where meteorologists have a high confidence level in climate change's influence.

"The science has advanced tremendously, we know that climate change is changing our weather. Now, different types of weather have different confidence levels," Placky said. "Almost any time you see extreme heat or record-breaking heat, there is an influence from climate change."

Carlos Ramos hands out bottles of water and sack lunches, Monday, June 28, 2021, as he works at a hydration station in front of the Union Gospel Mission in Seattle. Seattle and other cities broke all-time heat records over the weekend, with temperatures soaring well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius). (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

The heat wave that baked the Pacific Northwest during late June buckled roads, melted cables and claimed the lives of more than 100 people in Oregon and Washington State alone as record-shattering temperatures soared in a region unaccustomed to extreme heat.

Eugene, Oregon, recorded an all-time high temperature of 110 degrees Fahrenheit on June 27, breaking the old record of 108. The Oregon capital of Salem also recorded an all-time high of 112. Meanwhile, in Seattle, temperatures hit 108 on Monday, June 28 -- an all-time record for the city.

Portland saw temperatures soar to 116 degrees on June 28, the highest temperature on record and breaking the previous record of 112 set the day prior.

Blackouts also plagued the region, leaving thousands of people without power and without air conditioning in the locations that had units installed.

Over 100 deaths were attributed to the heat in Oregon and nearly another 60 in Washington State. Over 700 people died over the course of the heat wave in British Columbia, according to CBC in Canada -- triple the number of deaths that would normally occur in the providence during a one-week period.

Experts say that the extreme heat in a normally temperate region was considered virtually impossible without climate change in the picture.

"We know that heat waves associated with climate change, where there's at least a partial detection in attribution with climate change, are already killing people, so climate change is causing deaths today that can be prevented," Dr. Kristie Ebi, a professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of Washington, told AccuWeather National Reporter Bill Wadell.

Dr. Vivek Shandas, a professor in the Urban Studies department at Portland State University, told Wadell that he had tried warning leaders years earlier that the Northwest was vulnerable, with communities with more concrete and pavement with fewer trees enduring the worst of the heat.

"I measured 99 degrees in one neighborhood and 124 degrees in another neighborhood," he said.

While it may not seem like the case at first, the February freeze in Texas may also have been associated with warmer weather -- that weather just wasn't in the south-central U.S. A study published in the journal Science in early September found that the warming of the Arctic caused by climate change has increased the number of polar vortex outbreaks, which is what happened the week of Valentine's Day. The study was the first to show the connection between changes in the polar region and the outbreak in February, which claimed the lives of over 170 people and caused at least $20 billion in damage.

City of Richardson worker Kaleb Love works to clear ice from a water fountain Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021, in Richardson, Texas. Temperatures dropped into the single digits as snow shut down air travel and grocery stores. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

"It is counterintuitive that a rapidly warming Arctic can lead to an increase in extreme cold in a place as far south as Texas, but the lesson from our analysis is to expect the unexpected with climate change," The Associated Press quoted study lead author Judah Cohen, a winter storm expert for the Atmospheric Environmental Research.

From Wednesday, Feb. 11 into Saturday, Feb. 20, winter weather highlights totaling 8 days, 23 hours and 23 minutes, from winter weather advisories to hard freeze warnings, were recorded across Texas. The electric grid was ill-equipped to handle the crashing temperatures and many were left without power, heat and even water.

The Texas Department of State Health Services updated the official death toll in July, claiming more than 200 people across the state died from hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning and car crashes on ice-slicked roads. At least 10 deaths were reported in Galveston, according to the state's count. Harris County, where Houston is located, saw the highest number of fatalities with 43, followed by 38 lives in Travis County, which is home to Austin, and 20 in Dallas County.

"Texas isn't built for cold," TikTok content creator Tiffany Holloway told Wadell. After she and her family survived the cold in February, she took to social media to teach people how to prepare for dangerous weather. "Our houses are not insulated. Our roads -- we don't have big salt trucks that drive around to combat the ice that's formed on the roads. We don't have North Face jackets and things sold at our local stores. We don't have a way to combat the cold because Texas isn't built for that."

Texas grapefruit trees encased in ice after a winter storm hammered the state with record cold. (Dale Murden)

The confidence level of climate change's association with hurricanes is a bit weaker than that with extreme heat and heavy rainfall events due to the relevantly short period of time that satellites have been around.

"The data record for hurricanes changed when we put satellites up into the air, so it's a shorter period of record, but what we do know when it comes to climate change and hurricanes, or tropical systems in general, is that we have more heat in our oceans," Placky said. "Our oceans are sucking up 90-some-percent of the heat that comes into our climate system, and so they are fueling more intense, more rapidly intensifying storms and when they do come onshore, they're producing more heavy rain and a higher storm surge from sea-level rise."

As someone who lives in New Jersey, Hurricane Ida in particular stood out to Placky.

"It was local, It was personal," she said. "The amount of rain that it produced -- even well-forecast rain -- just overwhelmed our systems and way too many people died from that event. That's one that I would probably hold the most dear as we wrap up 2021."

Danny Hong shows where the water reached up to him as he shows the damage in his basement apartment on 153rd St. in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021, in New York. The remnants of Hurricane Ida dumped historic rain over New York City, with at least nine deaths linked to flooding in the region as basement apartments suddenly filled with water and freeways and boulevards turned into rivers, submerging cars. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

For the first time ever, the National Weather Service office in New York City issued a flash flood emergency on the evening of Sept. 1, covering northeastern New Jersey, as Ida arrived in the Northeast as a tropical rainstorm. Shortly after, the alert was followed by the office's second-ever flash flood emergency, now for New York City itself. Within one hour, Central Park was deluged with 3.15 inches of rainfall from 8:51 to 9:51 p.m., local time.

Hurricane Ida was a monster of a storm, making landfall in Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. With a barometric pressure of 27.46 inches of mercury (930 mb), Ida ranked as the seventh-strongest hurricane to make landfall in the contiguous U.S.

Back in late January, a ferocious storm system started as a powerfully drenching atmospheric river in California and ended as a coast-to-coast, billion-dollar disaster. Along with dumping over 7 feet of snow in multiple areas of the Sierra Nevadas and spewing damaging winds that topped 100 mph, many areas of the southern West Coast were pelted with over a foot of rain, triggering mudslides and debris flows that completely washed away highways.

From there, the storm raged through the Midwest, leaving behind nearly another foot of snow in the Great Lakes region. In Chicago, air travel was completely stifled by the storm, as 10.8 inches of snow were recorded at O'Hare International and 11 inches were recorded at Midway International.

But before the system could dissipate, it regained devastating strength off the coast of the Northeast and developed into a nor'easter, bringing historic amounts of snow to major cities in the region including New York City and Boston. As much as 2 feet of snow were recorded in some areas surrounding the major cities, making it the worst snowstorm to hit the region in over six years.

Another weather event that holds a bit less confidence than extreme heat but still maintains strong confidence is the setting of the stage for wildfires.

"Now it doesn't mean climate change caused the wildfires, but we know it is increasing the risk of an area becoming more ripe for these fires to just explode and become huge and become incredibly damaging," Placky said.

By Aug. 31, about 90% of the land in the western U.S. was experiencing moderate to severe drought, according to data from the U.S. Drought Monitor. With dry ground and little to no rain in sight, conditions were primed for the smallest spark to grow. The season appeared to kick off a month ahead of schedule as drought conditions were compounded by the June heat wave.

From Jan. 1 to Nov. 26, there were 52,729 wildfires compared to the 52,113 within the same timespan in 2020, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Overall, 2021 saw 58,000 fires that burned 7 million acres compared to the 57,000 fires that burned over 10 million acres in 2020.

The Dixie and Bootleg Fires were two of the most notable infernos. The Bootleg Fire consumed over 400,000 acres in Oregon before it was contained. The Dixie Fire, meanwhile, grew into the state's second-largest fire on record, according to Cal Fire, second only to the August Complex Fire from 2020. The Dixie Fire burned nearly 1 million acres and left the California town of Greenville in ruins.

When Stormchaser Brandon Clement was on the scene in the town, he compared the devastation to what he imagined the aftermath of a nuclear bomb would look like. Metal street lamps that lined the streets were "wilted like dead flowers," he said.

When it comes to measuring climate change's fingerprints with tornadoes, things get a bit more complicated as there are a couple of key ingredients that go into them, Placky said.

"You need that warm moist air -- we know that is increasing with climate change -- but, to get that spin in the atmosphere there's a lot of things that have to come together for that to happen and it's still earlier research on how our weather patterns are going to set up as we warm out the atmosphere," Placky said. "So it's a little bit less in the confidence level, but really early and interesting research."

Martha Thomas stays warm with a bed comforter as volunteers help salvage possessions from her destroyed home in the aftermath of tornadoes that tore through the region several days earlier, in Mayfield, Ky., Monday, Dec. 13, 2021. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

December was an unprecedentedly active month for tornadoes. It isn't uncommon for tornadoes to strike in December with about a 12-15% likelihood, but the chances are significantly lower than the 90% chance of a tornado occurring on a day in July, according to NOAA. The three-year average number of tornadoes in the month of December is 47. A total of 66 tornadoes have thus far been confirmed from the severe weather outbreak Dec. 10-11.

The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center listed 80 preliminary tornadoes through Dec. 14, prior to the month's second tornado outbreak.

Two long-tracked tornadoes were confirmed amid the swarm, one of which was rated as an EF4. The twister tore through western Kentucky with a path length of 165.7 miles and estimated peak winds that reached 190 mph. Mayfield, Kentucky, was one of the towns in the tornado's path.

Two weeks before Christmas and on the doorstep of winter, many families found their homes destroyed. The main hub of the Mayfield-Graves County Fire Department and Rescue Squad Station had also been demolished, along with all the equipment that was stored there. Only four vehicles from the station had been saved -- the main Number 1 engine, two squad rescue trucks and a pickup truck that's used to move equipment.

When it comes to moving forward, Placky says that the good news is that the solutions that exist to solve the climate crisis are in place and just need to be scaled. She added that electrifying the transportation sector and switching over to renewable energy that could be supported by battery power could solve about 70% of the emissions in the United States.

Additional reporting by AccuWeather On-Air Meteorologist Geoff Cornish and National Reporter Bill Wadell.

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