B8 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 , 2019
AVERAGE RECORD ACTUAL FORECASTPREVIOUS YEAR NORMAL LATEST<–10–0s 0s 10s 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s100s110+T-storms Rain ShowersSnow Flurries Ice Cold Front Warm FrontStationary FrontNATIONAL Today TomorrowHigh
Low
Normal
Record high
Record lowReagan Dulles BWIReagan Dulles BWIToday’s tides (High tides in Bold)
WORLD Today TomorrowSources: AccuWeather.com; US Army Centralized
Allergen Extract Lab (pollen data); airnow.gov (air
quality data); National Weather Service
* AccuWeather's RealFeel Temperature®
combines over a dozen factors for an accurate
measure of how the conditions really “feel.”Key: s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, r-rain,
shsn- showers, -snow, i-icet-thunderstorms, sf-snow flurries,Moon Phases Solar systemNATIONOFFICIAL RECORDRise SetREGION
Past 24 hours
Total this month
Normal
Total this year
NormalRichmondNorfolkOcean CityAnnapolisDoverCape MayBaltimoreCharlottesvilleLexingtonWashingtonVirginia BeachKitty HawkHarrisburg PhiladelphiaHagerstownDavisOCEAN:OCEAN:OCEAN:OCEAN:TemperaturesPrecipitationfor the 48 contiguous states excludes AntarcticaYesterday's National81° 1:01 p.m.
73° 7:00 a.m.
83°/66°
97° 1881
50° 190280° 1:35 p.m.
68° 6:34 a.m.
83°/61°
96° 1985
42° 199781° 12:10 a.m.
71° 7:00 a.m.
82°/62°
96° 1954
47° 1997Washington 2:08 a.m. 9:34 a.m. 2:48 p.m. 9:30 p.m.
Annapolis 6:12 a.m. 11:23 a.m. 5:47 p.m. none
Ocean City 1:34 a.m. 7:49 a.m. 2:15 p.m. 8:54 p.m.
Norfolk 3:47 a.m. 9:50 a.m. 4:27 p.m. 10:50 p.m.
Point Lookout 2:48 a.m. 7:28 a.m. 1:30 p.m. 8:42 p.m.
76 ° 65 ° 85 ° 64 ° 81 ° 64 ° 80 ° 66 ° 80 ° 69 ° 88 ° 69 °
Sun 6:41 a.m. 7:31 p.m.
Moon 2:43 p.m. none
Venus 7:13 a.m. 7:52 p.m.
Mars 6:34 a.m. 7:31 p.m.
Jupiter 2:16 p.m. 11:48 p.m.
Saturn 4:24 p.m. 1:55 a.m.Sep 14
FullSep 21
Last
QuarterSep 28
NewOct 5
First
Quarter0.02"
0.07"
0.55"
30.85"
26.95"0.00"
0.32"
0.59"
30.16"
28.59"Trace
Trace
0.60"
27.09"
28.45"Blue Ridge: Today, clearing. High 65–73. Wind north 7–14
mph. Tonight, mainly clear. Low 52–57. Wind northwest
5–10 knots. Saturday, mostly sunny. High 66–70. Wind
northwest 4–8 mph. Sunday, mostly sunny. High 68–72.
Wind southwest 5–10 mph.
Atlantic beaches: Today, tropical storm warning north,
hurricane warning south, heavy rain, strong wind from
Dorian, storm surge flooding, beach erosion. High 74–78.
Wind northeast 40–60 mph, higher gusts, strongest south.
Pollen: High
Grass Moderate
Trees Moderate
Weeds High
Mold HighUV: Low
2 out of 11+Air Quality: Good
Dominant cause: Ozone77/6377/6775/6275/6374 /6 173/6275/6081/6184/6076/6777/6977/60 72/6178/6274/55 76/65
76°78°80°77°Waterways: Upper Potomac River: Today, small craft advisory.
Wind northeast 10–20 knots. Waves 1 foot. A few showers. • Lower
Potomac and Chesapeake Bay: Today, tropical storm warning Drum
Point southward. Wind northeast 20–40 knots. Waves 4–8 feet
on the Chesapeake and Potomac. Rain.• River Stages: The stage
at Little Falls will be around 3.0 feet today, holding near 3.0 feet
Saturday. Flood stage at Little Falls is 10 feet.
Albany, NY 75/54/pc 72/53/pc
Albuquerque 94/68/s 91/67/pc
Anchorage 64/49/pc 62/50/sh
Atlanta 92/72/s 95/70/s
Austin 101/71/s 103/71/pc
Baltimore 75/60/c 83/59/s
Billings, MT 80/56/t 72/49/pc
Birmingham 92/70/s 95/67/s
Bismarck, ND 76/53/pc 56/48/r
Boise 85/59/pc 88/61/s
Boston 70/60/c 68/59/r
Buffalo 73/58/pc 70/53/sh
Burlington, VT 74/53/sh 68/53/c
Charleston, SC 91/71/pc 93/73/s
Charleston, WV 82/60/pc 78/55/s
Charlotte 91/64/s 91/67/s
Cheyenne, WY 80/58/t 82/51/pc
Chicago 76/58/pc 75/59/pc
Cincinnati 81/61/s 76/57/s
Cleveland 74/62/s 72/58/sh
Dallas 100/76/s 102/76/pc
Denver 86/61/pc 84/56/tDes Moines 82/59/s 77/60/c
Detroit 72/60/pc 74/58/pc
El Paso 95/72/pc 95/73/s
Fairbanks, AK 66/44/pc 68/45/pc
Fargo, ND 74/48/pc 62/49/r
Hartford, CT 73/56/r 73/53/r
Honolulu 93/79/pc 92/79/pc
Houston 101/75/s 102/74/s
Indianapolis 79/59/s 76/58/s
Jackson, MS 97/72/s 100/72/s
Jacksonville, FL 96/70/s 98/70/s
Kansas City, MO 85/61/s 82/66/pc
Las Vegas 102/81/s 105/77/s
Little Rock 96/72/s 92/70/s
Los Angeles 90/68/s 85/63/s
Louisville 87/65/s 81/61/s
Memphis 94/74/s 89/69/s
Miami 94/79/pc 92/78/pc
Milwaukee 74/57/pc 73/58/c
Minneapolis 77/58/pc 68/54/sh
Nashville 90/69/s 87/61/s
New Orleans 97/79/s 98/78/s
New York City 71/59/r 78/61/s
Norfolk 77/67/r 84/69/sOklahoma City 96/69/s 95/71/s
Omaha 84/61/s 81/63/c
Orlando 95/71/pc 96/72/pc
Philadelphia 72/61/r 81/62/s
Phoenix 107/87/s 108/83/s
Pittsburgh 77/58/pc 74/55/pc
Portland, ME 67/54/pc 65/53/r
Portland, OR 82/62/pc 75/61/pc
Providence, RI 70/58/r 70/55/r
Raleigh, NC 84/64/r 88/65/s
Reno, NV 90/58/s 89/52/pc
Richmond 77/63/r 86/63/s
Sacramento 91/59/s 81/56/pc
St. Louis 89/64/s 81/65/s
St. Thomas, VI 89/79/sh 88/78/sh
Salt Lake City 85/65/pc 89/63/pc
San Diego 84/70/pc 80/66/pc
San Francisco 72/59/pc 72/59/pc
San Juan, PR 89/78/sh 88/78/t
Seattle 79/59/s 72/59/pc
Spokane, WA 70/55/t 81/57/pc
Syracuse 75/57/pc 69/54/sh
Tampa 92/74/pc 92/76/pc
Wichita 91/68/s 92/74/sAddis Ababa 69/55/t 69/55/t
Amsterdam 64/51/r 64/50/t
Athens 88/72/s 88/70/pc
Auckland 58/50/pc 58/50/pc
Baghdad 109/78/s 105/77/s
Bangkok 90/78/sh 92/78/t
Beijing 94/66/pc 96/68/s
Berlin 70/48/pc 69/50/sh
Bogota 69/45/pc 69/47/r
Brussels 66/52/c 63/48/sh
Buenos Aires 61/49/c 65/48/c
Cairo 98/76/s 95/75/s
Caracas 75/66/t 76/67/t
Copenhagen 62/54/sh 64/52/t
Dakar 87/81/s 87/80/pc
Dublin 62/49/pc 62/48/pc
Edinburgh 61/45/sh 59/44/pc
Frankfurt 71/50/s 67/49/sh
Geneva 65/50/pc 70/48/pc
Ham., Bermuda 85/80/s 87/78/s
Helsinki 62/45/t 62/51/pc
Ho Chi Minh City 91/77/t 91/78/shHong Kong 90/81/t 91/81/t
Islamabad 95/77/pc 93/75/t
Istanbul 80/68/s 82/69/s
Jerusalem 83/65/s 82/69/s
Johannesburg 58/41/pc 66/39/s
Kabul 92/55/s 90/57/s
Kingston, Jam. 90/79/pc 90/80/pc
Kolkata 91/80/t 89/80/t
Lagos 84/75/t 81/76/t
Lima 65/60/pc 65/60/pc
Lisbon 91/67/s 88/65/s
London 65/50/r 67/47/pc
Madrid 81/58/s 83/60/s
Manila 88/80/r 88/79/t
Mexico City 75/55/t 74/55/t
Montreal 70/55/pc 63/53/sh
Moscow 72/53/pc 71/53/pc
Mumbai 86/80/t 86/80/sh
Nairobi 78/56/c 74/57/c
New Delhi 92/80/t 92/80/t
Oslo 56/48/sh 55/45/c
Ottawa 66/53/sh 64/49/c
Paris 71/55/pc 69/50/pc
Prague 64/53/pc 61/48/cRio de Janeiro 74/66/c 81/67/pc
Riyadh 112/85/s 111/82/s
Rome 77/63/t 78/63/pc
San Salvador 86/67/t 88/70/t
Santiago 65/41/pc 60/40/pc
Sarajevo 73/52/t 74/53/t
Seoul 84/75/sh 86/72/t
Shanghai 84/74/t 87/73/pc
Singapore 91/80/s 90/80/s
Stockholm 61/50/c 59/47/sh
Sydney 82/52/pc 65/51/s
Taipei City 92/78/sh 93/78/t
Tehran 91/70/s 94/69/s
Tokyo 87/78/pc 87/79/sh
Toronto 68/54/sh 72/51/pc
Vienna 67/55/c 62/53/r
Warsaw 70/50/pc 72/57/rToday
ShowerSaturday
Mostly sunny,
warmerSunday
Partly sunnyMonday
Mostly cloudy,
showerTuesday
Partly sunnyWednesday
Partly sunny,
warmerSu M Tu W Th F Sa Su M Tu W Th F Sa Su
through 5 p.m.yesterdayDifference from 30–yr. avg. (Reagan): this month: +4.5° yr. to date: +2.6°High: Needles, CA 109°
Low: Bodie State Park, CA 32°World
High: Failaka Island, Kuwait 120°
Low: Summit Station, Greenland –25°Weather map features for noon today.WIND:NE 10–20 mph
HUMIDITY:HighCHNCE PRECIP:60%FEELS*:74°W:
H:P:FEELS:86°NW 7–14 mph
High25%
W:
H:P:FEELS:84°WSW 6–12 mph
Moderate0%
W:
H:P:FEELS:80°ENE 6–12 mph
High30%
W:
H:P:FEELS:81°ESE 6–12 mph
High20%
W:
H:P:FEELS:91°S 7–14 mph
Very High25%Cloudy and breezy
More clouds fill our skies as Dorian
passes. We may see some showers
move through at times as well,
especially during the first half of the
day, but they are unlikely to amount
to much. Highs in the mid-70s to about 80. Winds
pick up to about 10 to 20 mph, with some gusts at
25 to 30 mph or so.
The Weather
WASHINGTONPOST.COM/WEATHER. TWITTER: @CAPITALWEATHER. FACEBOOK.COM/CAPITALWEATHERBALTIMORE SUNThey call it bad water, and it
spreads across the bottom of the
Chesapeake Bay every summer.
Watermen know that if they leave
crab pots at depths of more than
10 or 12 feet this time of year,
anything they catch will suffocate
in a layer of water starved of
oxygen.
And this season, the volume of
that water — known ominously as
the dead zone — is among the
largest in the past 35 years.
It’s the product of a chain reac-
tion that began with months of
heavy rain. Hot weather and calm
winds this summer only helped to
validate forecasts that the dead
zone would be large and persis-
tent in the Chesapeake in 2019.
That is evident not just in wa-
ter samples scientists have col-
lected to evaluate the dead zone,
but also in crab pots and fishing
nets from the Bay Bridge to Vir-
ginia. More often and more un-
predictably than normal, some
watermen are finding their catch
dead by the time they pull it out of
the water.
“The dead zones are getting
bigger, and they’re getting more
deadly,” said Don Pierce, a water-
man from Rock Hall, Md.
It is perhaps one of many signs
the Chesapeake is suffering a
hangover from more than a year
of record-setting rainfall. Though
the pace of precipitation has
slackened this summer, visible
impacts are lingering: Along with
the resurgence of the dead zone,
there was an extreme drop in
salinity that is only just beginning
to reverse, and possibly losses of
underwater grasses, too.
All of those ecological imbal-
ances add stress on species al-
ready challenged by poor water
quality, overfishing and climate
change.
Bruce Michael, a director at the
Maryland Department of Natural
Resources who measures the
dead zone, said, “It’s a stressful
time for a lot of our fish species.”
Since flooding rains began in
the late spring of 2018, continuing
into early this year, scientists and
environmentalists have been ex-
pressing fears of a hit to the bay’s
comeback. They’re still holding
hopes that the ecosystem has
built up the resilience to weather
the extreme precipitation.
Tommy Crowder, a St. Mary’s
County waterman, said that while
the dead zone is more severe than
usual this year, it’s just the latest
in swings the bay has always
endured.
“Some years it’s less prevalent,
and some years it’s really preva-
lent, and this is just one of those
years,” he said.
But some scientists say that as
climate change presents more fre-
quent and extreme challenges to
the Chesapeake, it’s harder to
predict how that could affect its
recovery. There could be more
episodes of unprecedented rain-
fall, and consequences like those
the bay is enduring.
“Whether or not it’s a short-
term hit or something that’s going
to have a legacy beyond this year I
think is uncertain,” said Jeremy
Testa, an associate professor at
the University of Maryland Cen-
ter for Environmental Science.
The dead zone is an area of
water containing little or no dis-
solved oxygen, which fish and
shellfish need to breathe. It can be
found every summer, trapped in
the bay’s deepest waters from
around the Bay Bridge south to
the mouth of the Potomac. It’s
largest down the bay’s main stem,
but also creeps into deeper chan-
nels of the Choptank, Potomac
and other tributaries.
The dead zone is the product of
a domino effect that begins with
winter and spring rain, washing
fertilizers, sewage and even air
pollution into waterways. Those
nutrients spur blooms of algae
that steal sunlight from aquatic
grasses growing at the bottom.
And when the algae die and sink,
the decomposition process uses
up oxygen stored in the water.
This summer, conditions have
made the problem especially pro-
nounced.
On the heels of record 2018
precipitation, winter and spring
rain acted like gasoline, loading
the bay with nutrients that cause
algae to blossom. Then, hot sum-mer weather served as a match,
helping all that dead plant ma-
terial to rot even faster. There
haven’t been enough storms and
strong winds to mix the bay up
and allow freshly oxygenated wa-
ter to reach the bottom.
Estimates of the dead zone’s
size in July and early August show
it peaked at more than 2 cubic
miles of water this summer —
nearly 50 percent larger than the
long-term average. That ranks it
as one of the three or four largest
on record since surveys began in
1985.
In many parts of the bay, the
summer heat also means water
close to the surface is too warm
for many fish. With inhospitable
conditions near the surface and
along the bottom, it can be hard
for creatures to find a home.
“There’s really only a fine layer
of suitable habitat for fish,” said
Michael, the Department of Natu-
ral Resources director.
On top of that are other linger-ing symptoms of 2018’s record
rain, which nearly doubled nor-
mal annual precipitation with
nearly 72 inches at BWI Marshall
Airport. Plant and animal species
around the bay are suited to toler-
ate a range of salinity, but for the
past year waters have been too
fresh for many of them to survive.
It’s too early to know the im-
pact in detail, but anecdotally, the
results of all that rain have been
devastating for oysters and clams
and some types of grasses.
North of the Bay Bridge, there
have been reports of oysters killed
by low salinity. And around much
of the bay, water has only recentlybecome salty enough to plant
lab-grown larvae on wild oyster
beds with any hope they will
survive. The unusually fresh wa-
ter has also allowed invasive blue
catfish — voracious eaters of oys-
ters, juvenile crabs and anything
else they can find — to spread.
Grasses had to weather a surge
of rainwater that scoured some
beds, and also carried with it
smothering sediment that
blocked out sunlight. Early indi-
cations from bay-wide grass sur-
veys this summer suggest those
challenges hit some species hard,
while others that thrive in fresh-
water conditions are standingstrong, said Brooke Landry, a bi-
ologist at the Maryland Depart-
ment of Natural Resources.
“We have gotten to a point of
resilience in at least a lot of the
areas of the bay,” she said. “It
doesn’t mean they can withstand
anything you give them.”
The bay will survive its latest
struggles, said Beth McGee, direc-
tor of science and agricultural
policy at the Chesapeake Bay
Foundation. But there will be
more to come, and that concerns
her.
“What pops up in my head is
climate change,” McGee said. If
there are more severe storms and
more intense rainfall in the fu-
ture, the low oxygen and low
salinity in the Chesapeake this
year “could portend our future.”
What can be done? The health
of the bay is, to a large degree, a
function of the weather. That’s
why bay advocates say more must
be done to reduce the load of
nutrients spread across farm
fields or released from sewage
treatment plants, efforts required
under a multistate bay pollution
“diet” that carries a 2025 dead-
line.
Pierce, the Rock Hall water-
man, said he fears it’s too late.
With so much population growth
and development within the bay
watershed, the human impact on
the estuary is simply too large. As
much as environmentalists cheer
progress at cleaning up the Ches-
apeake, water quality still, in
Pierce’s words, “sucks.”
He was barely able to outrun
the bad water as he moved his
crabbing operation gradually
from Virginia to Crisfield, Md.,
and back up to Kent County. He
started noticing it in the southern
Chesapeake as early as May and
has been gradually moving north
trying to avoid it in the months
since.
His crew has finally escaped it
in waters around the Sassafras
River in the upper reaches of the
bay. He sees the dead zone as one
of countless variables watermen
must mind: Stay ahead of it, and
you’ll be successful.
That doesn’t mean it will al-
ways be easy to work around, or
that it will get better, Pierce said.
“Who’s to know what hurricane
might come up here and ruin it all
again?”THE REGION
Chesapeake Bay’s dead zone among largest in decades
Ecological imbalance set
off by record-setting rain
is suffocating fish, crabsBALTIMORE SUN PHOTOSABOVE: David Morris of
Chestertown, Md., tosses back
a small crab while sorting last
week. RIGHT: Waterman Don
Pierce of Rock Hall, Md., pulls
up a crab trap. He said the dead
zones “are getting bigger, and
they’re getting more deadly.”