Coldest Water in World Kills 2M Chesapeake Bay Fish

UPDATE:This article states what I had suspected: "The reality, say biologists, is that these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated. Federal records show they happen on average every other day somewhere in North America. Usually, we don't notice them and don't try to link them to each other. Blame technology, says famed Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. With the Internet, cell phones and worldwide communications, people are noticing events, connecting the dots more." This is exactly what happened as tornado reports "increased" a few years ago - turned out the reports were increasing, but not the storms, because many small tornadoes went undocumented before.

ORIGINAL REPORT: In my blog about the Arkansas Bird Kill on Radar, I talked about a fish kill in Louisiana that probably wasn't related (and why). The death of 2,000,000 fish yesterday in the Chesapeake Bay, however, was definitely caused by weather -- the coldest water compared to normal (for this time of year) in the entire world!

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources reported yesterday that "an estimated 2 million fish have been reported dead in the Chesapeake Bay from the Bay Bridge south to Tangier Sound, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE)." This story has been widely distributed by the media, with many references to a similar kill in Louisiana two days before the Arkansas Bird Kill.

The MD DNR image above shows that nearly every station in the Chesapeake hit a 25-year low average water temperature for the month, and the graph (red squares) shows how far some stations went below normal (blue dots) in 2010, and below all historical records (yellow area). In fact if you look at a sea-surface temperature anomaly map for the entire world, the only other area which shows these types of anomalies is the northwest coast of Florida. Nowhere was colder than normal than those areas.

Current actual water temperatures in the Bay range from 2-7 degrees C (F). The reason for this cooling is self-evident -- the area experienced an extremely cold December compared to normal, as low as 9.1 degrees below normal, a level that is rare. Below is a plot of average temperatures compared to normal for the month.

If you live in this area, have you noticed anything unusual with the Bay this season? Leave me a Comment below or post on AccuWeather.com Facebook.

P.P.S.: Check out my report on the Arkansas Bird Kill at the link below (I think it was not weather-related, but the birds did show up on 3D radar).