Environmental Glance
As the calendar soon turns to April, it appears that we can finally shed all talk of the polar vortex until next winter as milder weather takes hold across much of the eastern U.S. and a cool-down ends the western heat wave.
A surge of warmth featuring temperatures above the historical average will impact the Southeast and parts of the eastern United States to start April, AccuWeather said in an online forecast. The pattern will support multiple days of temperatures in the 80s, with increasing risks for thunderstorms and heavy rainfall as a front advances later in the period.
Meanwhile, some good news is in the forecast for the drought- and heat-plagued West, as a cool, wet and even snowy pattern is forecast to bring some relief that's desperately needed across the region.
Towering flash floods and an imminent dam failure in the northern part of Oahu triggered evacuation warnings in Hawaii on Friday, as the state continued contending with a powerful storm this week.
States across the US south-west recorded blistering temperatures at the tail end of winter, including some of the hottest March temperatures ever recorded in the US, with forecasts indicating hotter days are still to come.
Rain continued falling in Hawaii on Sunday where a strong storm brought flash flooding, blizzard conditions and landslides to the islands as residents reported collapsed roads and one home washing away in rising waters.
In January, part of a decades-old sewer line in Maryland collapsed by the Potomac River. Over the following days, the broken pipe dumped more than 200 million gallons of raw sewage into the Potomac near Washington, D.C.
