Mark Gongloff: New York’s freak ‘flash drought’ will become less freakish

Maybe it never rains in Southern California, but for about a month this fall it also never rained in New York City, which this week asked citizens to conserve water. Or Philadelphia. Or Dallas.

Or several other U.S. cities that went from unusually wet in some cases to bone dry in a flash.



In fact, “flash drought” is the term for this sort of phenomenon. It joins “zombie fire,” “firenado” and “thundersnow” in the growing lexicon of freak weather events that normal, non-meteorologist people are having to learn as the climate grows hotter and more chaotic. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content.

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