Well here we are, winding down 2023. As we look back, here’s what we as a weather department thought were the 7 most notable weather events or weather stories of the past year.
First, we’re just going with “All the Rain”. It was a wet year, especially in Worcester where we notched the 4th wettest year on record. And it wasn’t just the rain, it was WHEN the rain fell… the weekends! Boston only recorded 7 completely dry weekends since June 1st. Sometimes it was just a trace (twice that happened) but there was something recorded at Logan for 24 of the 31 weekends.
Going hand-in-hand with the rain was the flooding in Leominster. We can’t forget about Attleboro and the Merrimack Valley who also saw significant flooding this year, but in Leominster we had the first flash flood emergency since 2020. Around 11″ of rain fell in about 6 hours. That is heavy rain on its own, but the terrain around Leominster acted like a funnel and pushed all of that water into the city.
And we just couldn’t catch a break this summer aside from all of the rain. You might remember June being one of the cloudiest Junes on record and we couldn’t get a break from the humidity either. But in the rare event we didn’t have clouds or we didn’t have rain or we didn’t have humidity, then it was the smoke! Coming along with a record setting wildfire season in Canada, that smoke was pushed into New England on several occasions creating hazy skies and air quality concerns.
This summer was also the summer of the tornado. On average, Massachusetts gets 2 tornadoes every year. This year gave us 8! They were lower end on the EF scale, but confirmed tornadoes, regardless. Mattapoisett, Barnstable, Foxboro, Weymouth, Stoughton, North Brookfield, and two confirmed in North Attleboro.
The biggest story for the planet was the heat, and we weren’t immune to that either. This year will go down as the hottest year on record for the planet, the hottest on record for Worcester, and the second hottest on record for Boston.
The hottest year, however, doesn’t mean there was NO cold. In fact, one of the notable events was the arctic blast in early February! Temperatures fell to -13° in Worcester and -10° in Boston. Wind chills were in the -30s! For Boston it was the coldest low temperature since 1957! And coming off of a very warm January, that blast of cold completely wiped out the peach crop this year.
And finally, probably not completely shocking given how warm the year was, was the lack of snow. In calendar year 2023, Boston picked up less than a foot of snow, making it the 4th least on record! Worcester’s snow tally wasn’t quite as sad thanks to a March Nor’easter. That storm dropped about 2 feet in the city, which if you think about it, was half of the year’s snow in just one storm.
