It feels like we just did this exercise, but it's that time of year to look back at some of the most impactful (and some of my favorite) CommonWx stories from 2025.
From no land falling hurricanes in the U.S. (more on that in just a bit) to reflecting on the ongoing impacts of 2024's Hurricane Helene, we covered lots of topics this year in the newsletter. I got to highlight some amazing stories and truly had some highlight moments in my career so far this year, so I've definitely got some favorites.
Without further ado, here are my top five favorite stories from this year...
Former President Thomas Jefferson was always a busy man, especially during his time in the White House.
But that didn't stop him from keeping a meticulous record of weather conditions in the nation's capital and at his home of Monticello.
I spoke with an editor of the Thomas Jefferson Weather Records project – an effort to digitize those records, which have never been compiled in a truly accessible form before now.
“With the advent of the internet, that made doing something with the weather records more practical – because if somebody wants to use the data, it’s much easier for them to manipulate it online than to have to get a book and read through it and look for it,” Alison Dolbier told me back in February.
This one was just too cool, and I happened to learn about this project by asking about a completely different topic...
Researchers and meteorologists have studied hail for years, but there has always been one big problem with that:
“All of our observations basically as long as we’ve been doing hail research is post-impact – meaning that the stone falls and you collect it maybe 20 minutes later, 30 minutes later after it’s had a chance to melt," Sean Waugh, a research scientist at NOAA's Severe Storms Laboratory told me back in May. "We don’t know what broke when it landed, how much of that mass, or size or shape have we lost between when it fell and when we find it, right? I’ve seen six-inch diameter stones melt before I can get out of the car to pick them up, so we know this is occurring,” he explained.
Waugh and his team are working to change that – they've come up with a high-tech rig featuring super bright lights and advanced cameras to capture hail in free fall.
The data will be used to produce better hail forecasts in the future.
Again, this story was just too cool to pass up and completely fell into my lap as well.
It represents how interconnected this third rock from the sun truly is and how scientific discoveries are often happy little accidents.
This humble well in Christiansburg started life in the early 1950s as a supply well to the town. It was taken over by the state of Virginia in the late 60s for groundwater monitoring purposes, which is still the primary purpose today.
However, the well is also seismically sensitive, which came as a surprise to those in charge of monitoring output from the well. That includes Dave Nelms, who monitored it for the U.S. Geological Survey before retiring. I asked him in August about why the well is sensitive to earthquake waves across the globe. It's not exactly clear! But he talked about this idea of "seismic permeability."
“If it can transmit the seismic waves so readily, then it’s going to impact the water because the water is very sensitive to pressure changes,” he said.
I've learned that Nelms recently passed away, so I especially wanted to highlight this story and the project in honor of him and the work he did to keep this well and its fascinating history alive.
I really enjoyed putting this story together because it highlights that a community can work to be better prepared for the worst after disaster strikes.
In November 1985, rain just kept on falling in the Roanoke Valley –leading to the Roanoke River rising by 19 feet in just 12 hours.
Retired WDBJ Meteorologist Robin Reed recalled this to me...
“I think the phrase was, ‘It’s never gone any higher than the tops of the tires of the car,’ or something like that. Yeah, 25 feet later that got smashed pretty badly.”
In the decades since then, the Roanoke area has taken several steps to better mitigate and prepare for flooding. That includes a historic project with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The "bench cuts" took decades to complete, but have already helped the city avert the worst of flooding events that have come since, including 2024's Hurricane Helene.
The city has taken other efforts like better monitoring of storm drains, capital improvement projects and land acquisitions of properties that were prone to flooding.
Leaders there are also working to acquire more funding for other stormwater-related projects.
>> Keep reading below for my top story of 2025
An honorable mention... No land-falling hurricanes in the U.S. this year
You may have noticed that there were no land-falling hurricanes in the United States this year... and I was curious how often that has happened before.
For help with that, I posed the question to Stephanie Zick, an associate professor at Virginia Tech who specializes in tropical meteorology.
To start off with, Zick said the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season can be gauged in a couple of different ways based off what metrics you look at. On average, the season that runs between June 1st and November 30th typically includes 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes. 2025 was right on that average with 13 named storms, five hurricanes and four major hurricanes.
However, one thing that was abnormal this year – there were no named storms between August 24th and September 16th, which is normally the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season.
"This is pretty uncommon and last happened in 1992. Before that, it hadn't happened since 1939," Zick said. "One major reason for the lack of activity during this time was drier, more stable atmospheric conditions across the Main Development Region. Basically, the Bermuda High was particularly strong in the early-mid hurricane season and that made conditions unfavorable for African Easterly waves, preventing these seeds from intensifying into named storms."
Only one tropical storm made landfall in the United States this year, but no hurricanes. While this may seem abnormal, Zick said the historical record typically only has one to two land-falling hurricanes in the U.S. in any given year, so a year with zero is not outside the statistical norm. There have been other lulls in the U.S. in recent memory as well – including a 10-year stretch between 2006 and 2015. That stint was broken by Hurricane Harvey in 2016, which struck Texas as a powerful Category 4 storm.
>> Now... to my top story of 2025!
This documentary was not only the top highlight of the year for CommonWx for me, but also a high mark for my career as a meteorologist so far!
Months of work were poured into learning more about the storm and checking in with those who are still working to recover now more than a year later.
Radio IQ's Roxy Todd did an excellent job telling those stories, and I truly enjoyed talking with meteorologists and tropical experts about what really made Helene tick.
The storm was unique for a number of reasons, but I think Helene's track through a part of the world that really doesn't see tropical systems move through every season played such a pivotal role in its destruction. That will be the challenge going forward: how do we get all communities – inland or otherwise – to be better prepared for these massive storms going forward? Especially as we continue to deal with the challenges of a warming climate. Ken Graham, who is now the head of the National Weather Service, puts it like this...
“So the last mile is getting people to understand that risk and then taking the steps it takes to be prepared, but also being ready to go when the warnings come out, when the flooding is there. You can have a perfect forecast – unless it’s actionable, that last mile fails.”
This was evident in Helene's forecast, which experts told me was pretty accurate. Meteorologists, emergency personnel and other officials must now work on making sure everyone has that information in a timely manner and in a way that makes sense and is actionable, as Graham stated.
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And that’s a wrap on 2025 here at CommonWx! Thank you all SO much for checking us out each month.
See you in 2026!
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