Albert James Mamary, 59, of Wynnewood, attending physician and professor of thoracic medicine and surgery at Temple University, researcher, writer, mentor, artist, outdoorsman, craftsman, and amateur bicycling champion, died Thursday, July 9, of cholangiocarcinoma at Temple University Hospital.
A 1999 graduate of Temple’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Dr. Mamary spent his career at Temple and affiliated hospitals. He was an expert in pulmonary disease, transplants, and sleep disorders at the Temple Lung Center, and became program director of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship at Temple Hospital in 2006.
He earned a master’s degree in anthropology at the College of William and Mary in Virginia and his premedical school credits at the University of Pennsylvania. In a tribute, his family said: “His education in both medicine and anthropology reflected a lifelong belief that caring for a patient required understanding not only the disease but the whole person.”
Over more than three decades at Temple — as a student, resident, fellow, professor, and physician — Dr. Mamary treated thousands of patients, mentored hundreds of students and doctors, lectured in classrooms and at seminars, and wrote more than 60 scientific papers and textbook chapters. He was named a top doctor by Philadelphia Magazine several times and was featured in The Inquirer and on 6abc TV for his lead role in a successful double-lung transplant in 2015.
“It’s been 120 to 145 patients, individual patients that we’ve been able to help every year,” Dr. Mamary told CBS News in 2024. “That’s really the aim here, is to add years of life to patients who otherwise wouldn’t have that opportunity.”
Colleagues called Dr. Mamary a “physician’s physician” and noted his “amazing intelligence and clinical acumen” in tributes. Gerard J. Criner, chair of Temple’s Department of Thoracic Medicine and Surgery, said: “His patients loved him not only for his clinical skills but also for the warmth, compassion, and humanity he brought to every encounter.”
A former patient said online: “He was a calm in the storm of my end stage disease. … The world has lost a hero.”
A former student said: “His kindness, thorough and balanced approach to medicine, and quiet, thoughtful approach to even the most stressful emergencies reminded me of a Jedi master.”
Dr. Mamary and his wife, CeilaSue, married in 1996.Courtesy of the family
Away from the hospital, Dr. Mamary liked to bike, hike, and camp. He built his own 18-foot mahogany canoe, walked the entire 272-mile Long Trail in Vermont, and won masters bicycling championship races.
He also painted and sculpted, and earned a bachelor’s degree in art and psychology at Haverford College. He and his wife, CeliaSue, initiated the Shortridge Memorial Park Arboretum in Wynnewood and earned a 2024 community service award from Narberth and Lower Merion officials.
“James brought wisdom, kindness, curiosity, and genuine joy to every moment,” his wife said.
Albert James Mamary was born June 12, 1967, in Hempstead, N.Y. He grew up in Binghamton, N.Y., became an Eagle Scout, and was a wilderness river guide for the Boy Scouts in Maine during his college years.
Dr. Mamary was an avid bicyclist and won masters championship races. Courtesy of the family
He met CeliaSue Jaffe in class at Haverford, and they married in 1996 and had daughters HannahRose and LilyRuth. They lived in East Falls and Wynnewood, and he rode his bike from home to Penn and then Temple as often as he could.
Dr. Mamary enjoyed traveling, baking, cooking, and gardening. “His specialty is fruits and vegetables, and I grow the flowers,” his wife said.
He followed the Phillies, rescued cats and dogs, and doted on his daughters. Everybody said he was funny and silly.
“He was curious and always learning or doing something new,” his daughter LilyRuth said. “He took joy in simple things.” His daughter HannahRose said: “Even if he wasn’t my dad I would want him as a friend because he was so interesting and so easy to talk to.”
Dr. Mamary was a wilderness river guide for the Boy Scouts in Maine during his college years.Courtesy of the family
Dr. Mamary was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, bile duct cancer, in 2020 and treated by longtime colleagues and friends at Temple, some of whom he had mentored. “It was a profound reflection of the life he lived,” his family said, “that so many of those he had taught ultimately became his caregivers.”
His wife said: “He was a very vibrant and adventurous person but so thoughtful, steady, and reliable. James was incredible.”
A partial eclipse will occur Wednesday, along with a planetary alignment that doesn’t happen all that often.
For star power, however, the annual Perseids meteor shower, which will be peaking late Wednesday night and early Thursday, may outshine them both as the moon gets out of the way to prepare for its big night at the end of the month.
The Perseids should put on quite a decent show this year for those who have access to reasonably dark skies and do not mind staying up a little late.
These things can produce 50 to 100 meteors an hour underultra-dark sky conditions, but you won’t see that many above light-polluted Philly.
Above the darkness-challenged Philadelphia Museum of Art, you might be able to catch 10 an hour, said Bill Cook, NASA’s meteoroid guru at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
The potential spoiler in all this would be the state of the skies, which are expected to be sunny Wednesday. But just how cloud-free they will be at night is not clear just yet, said Patrick O’Hara, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Mount Holly.
The weather service is calling for mostly clear skies late Wednesday night, but some clouds may roll in after midnight, and it says the forecast contains “a frustrating level of uncertainty.”
About the eclipse
The eclipse has been generating media attention, and it is going to be a spectacular show — if you happen to be in Greenland or Iceland or northern Spain, places that will experience the haunting magic of totality, which will occur around 1:45 p.m. Philly time.
Locally?
“Philly just isn’t in the right place for any good eclipse viewing this time around,” said Teddy Kareta, assistant professor of astrophysics and planetary science at Villanova University.
Only about 8% of the sun will be blocked out at Philly’s latitude, said Dwight Dulsky, with the Bucks-Mont Astronomical Association.
Said Kareta, “That’s a small enough change that … I don’t think I’d even notice.”
Dulsky said the Bucks-Mont group “will be doing some safe solar viewing” of the eclipse in the marina parking lot of Nockamixon State Park, in Upper Bucks County.
Early risers (or late stay-uppers) on Wednesday can admire a planet parade in the western sky, or at least some of its participants.
Four planets — Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn — will be lined up and visible to the unaided eye, said Kareta, though Jupiter and Mercury may be elusive, since they will be close to the horizon.
The line may be slightly less orderly on the 13th, but may not look much different from the perspective of the average earthling, Kareta added.
If you miss the planet show, Kareta advises that these things may be special but are not exactly rare. A similar alignment occurred “about a year ago,” he said.
“As an astronomer,” he said, “I find these planetary alignments more fun and beautiful than I find them super interesting.”
The Perseids are about to peak
Several hours after the moon gets in the sun’s way Wednesday, it will be fortuitously out of the way for the annual Perseid meteor showers.
As many as 50 to 100 meteors per hour may appear at their absolute peak, which this year would be in the early morning hours of Thursday.
Elsewhere in the great Philadelphia city-state, French Creek State Park, bordering Chester and Berks Counties, is a favorite among local sky watchers, and the prime viewing area is open all night.
At least a few watch parties are planned, including one by the Bucks-Mont group from 8 to 11 p.m. at the Nockamixon park, Dulsky said.
The Perseids are so named because they appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus, but they show up all over the sky. They are the most popular among the 30 or so showers visible in the night sky annually.
The Geminids, in December, outnumber the Perseids, but people prefer warmth with their meteor-watching. Plus, NASA reports that the Perseids are by far number one for those spectacular fireballs.
The meteors are the result of debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle, one of the larger meteor-producing comets, having a diameter of about 15 miles.
The earth encounters Swift-Tuttle detritus every year around this time, and those cosmic pebbles become bright streaks as they enter Earth’s atmosphere at 130,000 mph. If they’re big enough, they explode into fireballs.
Cook says that while the moonless skies offer the ideal background, this will not be an especially prolific year for the Perseids. He said the 2028 harvest will be more abundant, when the earth passes through “a denser stream” of the comet’s sheddings.
That once-in-a-blue-moon event
The moon will be returning later in the month, on Aug. 31, as the second full moon of August, thus a “blue moon.” Like those planetary alignments, it is something to expect once in a blue moon.
Tori Bauver was sitting at home on July 11 when the sky outside of the Wyndon Apartments in Wynnewood began to darken. Bauver watched the clouds roll in, then the rain come, blowing “literally sideways” outside her window. She remembers leaning in to see the darkening landscape and noticing that rain had begun to penetrate her windows. Then the “outside went stark white” and water started pooling on her windowsills.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God. This is gonna flood. This apartment’s gonna flood,’” she said.
The light fixture above Bauver’s bed filled with water, then poured over the edges. The ceilings began to leak, then one by one, they collapsed. The building’s roof ripped off, and Bauver had a clear, and unsettling, view of the sky from her living room.
Bauver, now a resident of West Chester, where she and her partner moved after breaking the lease on her Wynnewood apartment, had been living in the Wyndon Apartments for two years when the July microburst storm tore through Lower Merion, destroying her home and more than $5,000 of her and her partner’s belongings. She was one of dozens of suburbanresidents who emerged from the storm with damaged property and a devastated home.
As the Philadelphia region sees hotter and more humid summers, flash flooding, extreme precipitation, and life-threateningstorms have become a more common feature of daily life.Weather eventsmarked by downed trees, dangerous flash floods, waterlogged roadways, and eroded bridges are, more and more,forcing suburban residents and cash-strapped local governments to pour millions into repair and resilience projects, all while large swathsof the region’s infrastructure are built to withstand weather patterns of a bygone era, one in which storms like July’s microbursthappened once in a decade, rather than multiple times a summer.
As the region’s weather patterns intensify, officials and climate experts say the municipal mosaic of Philadelphia’s suburbs faces unique challenges when it comes to planning for a future marked by climate change.
Utility workers restore power in Merion Station on July 13 after a microburst storm ripped through parts of Philadelphia and Montgomery County.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
The Philadelphia region’s changing weather
The average July temperature in Philadelphia has risen 4.4 degrees since 1940. In the 1900s, Philadelphia averaged four days per year with temperatures above 95 degrees, according to a 2024 EPA report. This summer, Philly has seen six days with high temperatures above 95 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. By the end of the 21st century, that number could climb to more than 50 days per year.
Hotter weather means more precipitation, and more frequent and intense rain events. For every 1.8 degrees the air temperature increases, the amount of water the atmosphere can hold increases by 7%.
“The infrastructure we have now is not always built to a standard to accommodate the extreme weather we’re seeing now,” said Chris Linn, manager of the Office of Resilience and Environment at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.
AsRay Courtney, a Lower Merion commissioner and chair of the township’s sustainability committee, said, “We get a 100-year storm every year.”
Cars in a flooded parking lot at the Ferry Avenue PATCO station in Camden on July 6. Philadelphia and its suburbs have been hit with numerous flash floods this summer, as an increasingly hot and humid atmosphere gives way to more extreme weather.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Flooding as ‘the biggest and most common hazard’
The impacts of intense storms are multitudinous and cascading, and the topography of Philadelphia’s suburbs can make it particularly difficult to find effectivesolutions.
Linn said flooding is “the biggest and most common hazard that communities face,” and it presents the most “consistent and pervasive” issues for municipal leaders.
Intense precipitation and flash floods, which have been a constant this summer, can disrupt transit, turn roads into rivers, and endanger residents’ lives. High winds and saturated soil frequently bring down trees, damaging homes and cars and knocking out overhead power lines. Disruptions to power can be particularly dangerous when residents are left without fans or air-conditioning during hot summers.
Flooding has been reported more than 200 times in the Philadelphia region over the last two summers.Stephen Stirling
“I see roads flooding consistently, trees coming down, power going out, and then our local government spending resources every time one of these storms happens. It’s overtime costs and tree costs, and then also all the private citizens having to spend costs cleaning up trees and other debris,” Courtney said.
“These unlikely, freak events are really the ones that break us,” said Matthijs Bouw, architect and professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design.
A key tool for managing extreme weatheris stormwater systems, or the collection of drains, basins, ditches, and pipes that collect rainwater and snowmelt and move it from developed areas into local waterways. Stormwater systems are critical in moving water off impervious, or impenetrable, surfaces, like the parking lots, paved roads, and shopping centers often found in the suburbs.
The more developed a suburb is, the more runoff a storm will produce, increasing flooding risks, said Franco Montalto, professor of civil, architectural, and environmental engineering at Drexel University.
Yet many municipalities are contending with aging stormwater systems that require costly repairs. Lower Merion’s 2018 Comprehensive Stormwater Management Plan listed aging pipes, undersized infrastructure, operational costs, and increasing flooding as challenges for the township. Many of Philadelphia’s suburban communities are composed of buildings that predate a 1978 state law requiring counties and local governments to plan with stormwater management in mind.
Some communities are more vulnerable to climate impacts than others, with density, land cover, wealth, and the state of repair of existing infrastructure as factors. A 2021 climate change vulnerability analysis by Montgomery County found denser, water-proximate communities like Norristown and Pottstown to have some of the highest risk of increased stresses due to climate change. Greener, more rural parts of the county like New Hanover and Marlborough Townships presented lower risks.
The aftermath and clean up of flooding in Camden on July 6. Stormwater systems are a critical tool for local governments to manage flooding. Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
How can communities mitigate impacts?
Experts described a range of interventions for managing climate impacts, from constructing rain gardens to rewriting zoning ordinances.
Maintaining a healthy tree canopy and building rain gardens can help rainwater permeate into the ground. Larger infrastructure efforts like stream restoration projects and floodplain maintenance can help stabilize the built environment.
However, Linn said, these interventions “don’t necessarily address more severe or catastrophic flooding in terms of mitigating those impacts.”
Long-term climate resilience, experts said, relies on making land-use and zoning decisions that preserve floodplains and natural drainage patterns and ensure stormwater systems can manage our new, rainy reality.
Montalto is interested communities that have become “safe to flood,” or that have created parks, parking lots, road medians, and other open spaces that trap water during floods, then properly drain it, keeping it away from buildings and roads. A basketball court built below a park, for example, can fill with water during a storm and slowly drain, mitigating runoff (one was recently installed in New York City). Copenhagen’s Cloudburst Management Plan, adopted in 2012 after a major storm, is a blueprint of sorts in Montalto’s mind.
However, bringing “safe to flood” infrastructure to Philly’s suburbs may be a far-out goal.
In the vast suburbs, the collection of boroughs, townships, and county lines makes unified action difficult, and forces officials to think along municipal, not watershed, lines. On the Main Line alone, rainfall and snowmelt drain into a collection of dozens of creeks and streams that do not start or stop where a municipal boundary is drawn, making it difficult to take coordinated and effective action when it comes to flood mitigation along certain waterways.
Finding the funding to repair and replace stormwater infrastructure, too, can be taxing, as local governments stare down costly projects, even with the availability of state and federal grants.Political will factors in, with municipalities differing in their desire and ability to use taxpayer dollars to tackle climate issues.
Philly’s suburbs, like the city, are also often old, dense, and built out, making it hard to retrofit them to be more climate-sensitive.
“So many of our communities are built out and have been built out for a long time, so the vulnerabilities and the challenges are built in to the community,” Linn said.
Utility workers restore power along Wynnewood Avenue in Merion Station on July 13.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Solving ‘complex issues’ in Montgomery County
Despite the challenges, progress is being made, said Montgomery County Commissioner Jamila Winder.
Montgomery County in 2025 led a flood mitigation planning study for the 362-square-mile Perkiomen Creek Watershed, which stretches across Montgomery, Bucks, Berks, and Lehigh Counties. The study identified flood-prone areas, evaluated mitigation tactics, and worked to build a framework for long-term resilience. The county is currently in the process of carrying out a floodplain restoration project along the Wissahickon Creek in Whitemarsh Township. Both projects came to fruition after Hurricane Ida tore through the region, bringing record floods and killing multiple people.
The county has repaired 30 structurally deficient bridges since 2017 and has repaved dozens of miles of road. County workers also removed 200 dangerous trees earlier this year, resulting in a significant drop in emergency phone calls about tree damage, Winder said.
Lower Merion in 2021 hired its first full-time sustainability manager and in 2023 completed its first sustainability plan. Radnor Township has adopted a comprehensive climate plan, and Haverford Township has set out to achieve 100% zero-carbon renewable power by 2035.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in January announced more than $17 million in funding for environmental projects across the state, including stream restoration and stormwater management.
Winder said, “We’re seeing that when we work across federal, state, county, and local leadership, that we can come together to solve some of these complex issues.”
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
Skin-clinging humidity, random downpours, heat indexes in triple figures, steamy nights. Welcome to Miami North.
The heat advisory for the entire region has been extended to 8 p.m. Saturday, with more random showers likely. As to when something resembling comfort returns to Philly? “That’s the million-dollar question,” said Matt Benz, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc.
Similar conditions could persist into late next week, he added.
Highs might not get much past 90, but with the atmosphere this steamy, the heat index in Philly had reached 102 at 2 p.m. (In Miami, it was down to 82, thanks to a cooling thunderstorm.)
Both Camden and Delaware Counties have posted “code red” heat advisories, even though conditions are not expected to approach the official criteria of two consecutive days of highs of at least 95 degrees.
Waves of air from the Gulf Stream and the gulf itself continue to wash over the Mid-Atlantic region, said Brian Hurley, senior branch forecaster at the federal Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Md., adding that the situation is going to persist.
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On the plus side, drought conditions continue to ease, and officially in Philadelphia, rainfall since Jan. 1 is now about normal, recent rains having wiped out a significant deficit.
Officially, both the entire state of New Jersey and Chester County are under state-imposed “drought warnings,” but changes may be in the wind and the clouds.
Three months ago, all of New Jersey was in at least “moderate drought,” according to the interagency U.S. Drought Monitor, but with Thursday’s update, less than half the state was so designated. As for Chester County, the percentage of the county in “severe drought” has dropped from 90% to 37% in the same period.
However, the recent rains have come in fits and starts and have been less generous in some areas and overly generous elsewhere, and have had a knack for outwitting science.
Those random downpours are going to continue
“Multiple rounds of showers and thunderstorms each afternoon and evening may become strong to severe,” the National Weather Service in Mount Holly warned Thursday.
Don’t expect much notice.
Case in point: Around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, the weather service posted a missive: “The threat for flooding has diminished tonight.”
Shortly thereafter, flood warnings went up for portions of all four of Philly’s neighboring Pennsylvania counties.
That followed afternoon downpours that caused extensive road flooding in Philly and neighboring areas as a corridor of heavy rain cut through the city.
Michael Silva, a meteorologist in the Mount Holly office, was among those who had not seen it coming.
“Before work, I was about to go out twice for walks,” Silva said. “Then I looked at the radar.”
Despite all the rain, and probably as result of the antecedent dryness — heading into July, Philadelphia had experienced 16 consecutive months of below-normal rainfall — stream and river levels remain well below the danger zones.
And so far, the trees appear to be holding their ground, said Shane Farrell, arborist with the Davey Tree Expert Co., and to date he has not seen the type of “mud slurry” that might coax them out of their roots, barring severe-storm gusts.
Showers are likely to be numerous and widespread on Friday, said AccuWeather’s Benz.
The outlook for the weekend for Philly and the Shore
Saturday is expected to be a clone of Thursday, as a so-called Bermuda high-pressure system over the North Atlantic continues to lure steamy air northward. Winds circulate clockwise around centers of high pressure; thus, areas to the west of the center, where Philly happens to be, experience winds from the south and southwest.
Benz sees an outside chance that an approaching front will provide a very temporary and modest measure of relief on Sunday. Don’t bet on it, however. He said it is going to encounter a whole lot of resistance along the way.
The outlooks are similar for the Jersey Shore, which is likely to be quite a popular destination this weekend.
Yet more rinse-and-repeat flood warnings were posted for Philadelphia and portions of adjacent counties Wednesday as more downpours oozed through the region.
And don’t be surprised if more pop up later in the week, as the atmosphere will remain thickened with so much skin-clinging water vapor that “it’s not going to take much” to turn on the faucets, said Michael Silva, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Mount Holly.
One indicator of the atmospheric saturation: The weather service has posted a heat advisory for Thursday as heat indexes could rise to 100 or better — even though temperatures won’t get much past 90. That is all about the humidity in what could be the start of a more muggy wave, as opposed to a traditional heat wave.
The moisture in the air on Wednesday was such that the rain, which began around lunchtime, ended up being more ferocious than expected.
“Before work, I was about to go out twice for walks,” Silva said. “Then I looked at the radar.”
The heavy rains were wrung out along a narrow corridor cutting through the city, and they generated widespread traffic disruptions during the afternoon.
The weather service said that 1.23 inches of rain had been measured at Philadelphia International Airport, just between noon and 1 p.m. More than 2 inches fell upon parts of Bucks County.
Road flooding was widespread in Philly, Bucks County, and South Jersey.
Among the highways affected were the Schuylkill Expressway in the Point Breeze area; I-95 in Eastwick, at the Platt Bridge, and in the Croydon, Bucks County, area, where the warning was extended until 6:15 p.m.; and Route 130 in Burlington County.
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The rains were getting juice from a rich pulse of moisture from the South, said Mike Gorse, a meteorologist at the weather service’s Mount Holly office.
What’s more, these types of threats may be a “repeated thing” later in the week, he added, echoing Silva’s comment, with showers in the forecast again for Thursday night and Friday as the region is stuck in another sultry air mass.
The recent rains represent quite a reversal of fortune for the region and the entire state of New Jersey.
After 16 consecutive months of below-normal precipitation in Philly, officially close to 10 inches of rain has been measured since July 1, and recent rains have set off rashes of flood warnings, including on Sunday.
July’s total, 7.03 inches, was 2.65 inches above normal.
Still, water levels along the Schuylkill in Norristown and the Delaware River at Trenton have remained relatively low, the result of all that antecedent dryness.
However, flashier creeks, such as the Neshaminy, in Bucks County, are prone to slosh over in downpours, said Sarah Johnson, the weather service’s warning coordination meteorologist in Mount Holly.
While Chester County and all of New Jersey remain under drought warnings, the recent turn to wetness may have some staying power, she said.
According to the weather service’s Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center, which relies on networks of observations in each county, rainfall in all 21 counties in New Jersey has been well above normal in the 60-day period that ended on Tuesday.
On the Pennsylvania side, rainfall was at or above normal in Philly and its neighboring counties — including Chester County, where the 9.17-inch total was 113% of normal.
The federal Climate Prediction Center’s longer-term outlooks see chances favoring above-normal precipitation from next Tuesday through Aug. 19.
In July, Republican candidates in Michigan were lining up to excoriate Canada for the wildfire smoke wafting across the international border. “They MUST PAY and PUT OUT the fires!” wrote gubernatorial candidate John James on X, after declaring he would introduce legislation to impose sanctions on the neighbors to the north. Other politicians made similar claims about how they would deal with Canada. Meanwhile, Donald Trump moved to impose new tariffs on Canada in response.
Such political posturing shows little understanding of the actual situation. For example, it overlooks the fact that the scale and magnitude of these fires is surely linked to climate change, which the United States is arguably doing less to combat under the Trump administration than any other industrial nation in the world.
This is not the first time the two countries have dealt with cross-border air pollution. However, in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region historically, it was more often American emissions that were afflicting Canada.
By the mid-20th century, air pollution across the Michigan-Ontario border in the St. Clair-Detroit River corridor was raising significant concerns. At the request of both nations, the International Joint Commission (IJC), which had been created by the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty, formed a joint St. Clair-Detroit Air Pollution Board in the 1960s to investigate the precise sources of air pollution in this region.
In a 1971 report, this board found that sulfur dioxide and particulate matter from Detroit’s auto and steel industries were crossing over to Windsor, Ontario. Along the St. Clair River, the joint board reported that Sarnia’s Chemical Valley south of the city, which had already developed into an enormous petrochemical complex that befouled both air and water, was the main pollution culprit. Certainly some of the poisons drifted into Michigan, though the board determined that the primary victims were in Ontario. The IJC duly recommended that the two federal governments create pollution boards and establish national air quality standards.
A similar dynamic played out in other transboundary air disputes between Ontario and adjoining U.S. states, with both sides (though more often the United States) found to be the culprit. Ontario Hydro built a large coal-fired power station at Atikokan in the northwest part of the province that threatened cherished recreational areas across the border, such as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. In another instance, the Reynolds aluminum smelter in Massena, N.Y., was accused of contaminating the nearby binational Mohawk community, including the parts in Canadian territory.
Over time, the air quality issues stemming from these specific sources mostly either fell off the public’s radar or became subsumed within wider debates about acid rain and national air quality agreements (such as the 1970 Clean Air Act). Indeed, by the 1980s acid rain dominated not only the Canada-U.S. environmental relationship, but general bilateral relations.
Acidified precipitation is created when sulfur and nitrogen oxides (SO2and NOx) emissions, often from coal plants, are transported through the atmosphere and transformed into sulfuric and nitric acids. This acid rain fell onto terrestrial and aquatic environments where it had a range of short- and long-term negative consequences. Melting acidic winter snows produce an “acid shock” in streams during the spring run-off, for example, which is predictably bad for aquatic species.
While both countries generated pollution that fell in the other’s territory, acid rain originating in the United States and descending to earth in Ontario was the biggest problem. Ongoing bilateral studies established that 70%-80% of it came from the United States. That acid rain affected cottage country north of Toronto — where many of the country’s elite have vacation homes — helps explain why this problem gained so much public traction.
But the two countries could not agree on solutions, such as the need for emission limitations and controls. As the primary contributor, the United States would have had to bear the brunt of any necessary changes, and the Reagan administration was ideologically opposed to any environmentally motivated regulations on economic activity. Washington stalled the talks, calling for more research.
The United States proved more amenable to addressing the problem after George H.W. Bush entered the White House in 1989. Negotiations began on what would emerge as the 1991 Canada-United States Air Quality Agreement (AQA), which permanently capped emissions at approximately 13.3 million tons by 2010 in the United States and 3.2 million tons in Canada. While the United States would not make any legal commitments to reduce emissions in Canadian territory, it did pledge to follow the requirements of its recently updated Clean Air Act, which reduced the emissions that created acid rain.
Made By History sponsorsInquirer Staff
Ultimately, the results of the 1991 Air Quality Agreement were mixed. SO2 emissions did go down by almost 70%. Granted, this decrease probably had more to do with domestic regulations and technological changes on both sides of the border. In the long run, neither country has fully followed through on its commitments.
The AQA also created a framework that could incorporate other air pollution issues, such as particulate matter and ozone. In that vein, Canada and the United States signed an “Ozone Annex” to the Air Quality Agreement in 2000. There was also a different type of ozone problem — the hole in the ozone layer — involving Canada and the United States; both were adherents to the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, considered by many to be the most successful global environmental treaty ever.
To be sure, the United States and Canada have had the world’s most consequential environmental and energy relationship over at least the last century. No two nations have exchanged resources and collectively modified ecosystems on the same scale — which, by extension, has created harmony in wider U.S.-Canada relations and established many important precedents for international environmental law and governance. Yet, both countries are also petro states and climate villains, with their societies and economies organized around deeply unsustainable industrial practices and consumption patterns.
The amity that has long characterized U.S.-Canada relations has been eroding with Trump at the helm. And this recent strife about transborder smoke is representative of the ways that breakdowns in U.S.-Canada environmental and energy relations can undermine the rest of the relationship.
Made By History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of The Inquirer.
The smartphone alerts and the battery of weather watches and warnings were chilling. But they failed to capture what actually happened in the immediate Philadelphia area.
As it turned out Tuesday, not all that much happened, beyond a beneficial rainfall, some flashbulb lightning, and wind gusts that officially did not get past 34 mph. Heavy rains hammered Upper Bucks County, but around Philly, creeks behaved and flooding reports were isolated, even as damaging storms struck to the north and south of the region.
As so often occurs with summer thunderstorm outbreaks — not to mention winter storms — we learned science is playing catch-up with the atmosphere. That was evident Tuesday night, and if you feel as though you’ve seen this movie before, the forecasts and the outcomes were similar on July 18 and 21.
And expect recurrences — and surprise storms — even if the climate stops changing.
The atmosphere still is jealously guarding some of its most important secrets, said Bill Bunting, deputy director of the federal Storm Prediction Center, the national house of mayhem in Norman, Okla., that is responsible for all the severe-storm and tornado watches.
In his 40-plus years in the storm-forecasting business, Bunting said,“I have seen remarkable progress, but we’re nowhere near perfection. In the end, the science has its limitations.”
About the Tuesday night storms
Life is unfair, and that works both ways. The Philly region has had its share of storm ambushes historically, and as for what did not happen in and around the city Tuesday, “we’ll consider that a much more fortunate outcome than what could have been,” said Mike Lee, meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Mount Holly.
The outcome was similar to that of July 18 and July 21, when the menu of threats — wind, possible floods and tornadoes, lightning — was about the same. The gusts on the 18th did not get above 35 mph at Philadelphia International Airport, andthey did not get above 30 mph on the 21st.
Bunting said this week’s storms were particularly problematical meteorologically. “The wind fields were quite strong” in the upper atmosphere, he said. “That environment was not one to mess around with.”
It was as though the system had wandered in from a different season, when cooler temperatures create sharp temperature contrasts that drive storm development,Lee’s colleague Patrick O’Hara said.
At 12:50 p.m., the storm center had seen enough to issue a broad-brush severe-thunderstorm watch that covered a huge swath of the Mid-Atlantic region, including much of Pennsylvania and all of New Jersey and Delaware.
A tornado watch followed a few hours later.
The Mount Holly office issued two tornado warnings for the Philly area — including one covering Wilmington and Chester City.
However, the two twisters verified by the Mount Holly office occurred in Talbot County, Md.
The heaviest rains — in some cases over 4 inches in Quakertown — mostly were confined well to the north of Philly. Officially, 0.72 inches of rain was measured at PHL.
Wind-damage and flooding reports around the Philly area were sparse, although Bunting advised it can take days following a storm to get an accurate assessment of impacts.
The future of thunderstorm forecasting
Bunting suggested that complaints about forecast accuracy could be viewed as forms of flattery, since they well from the public’s expectations that, in turn, well from advances in forecasting.
In 1985, Bunting recalled,he was working with one computer-model output that he received via a fax machine, and observation tools primitive by today’s standards.
But forecasting the development and movement of thunderstorms remains one of the great challenges of meteorology, and it is inevitable that storms are not going to materialize in some areas that are under a storm watch.
“You don’t now exactly where those storms will organize into a cluster, or fast-moving line segment,” he said. “So you have to put larger areas on notice.”
A wild card in any cluster or line of storms would be renegade, isolated storms, the kind that are apt to spin up a tornado, Bunting said.
For any given storm, he said, “until it forms in a larger area with similar conditions, it’s hard to pinpoint the risk.”
What would it take to pinpoint the risks? Improved understanding of storm physics, improved remote-sensing capabilities, and more powerful models, Bunting said.
“It is not a trivial challenge,” he said. “The decisions are not going to be perfect.”
That is not necessarily a bad development, he added.
“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if we knew what the weather would be in great detail, weeks and months advance,” he said. “It seems to me it would get kind of old.”
With the atmosphere behaving like a shaken bottle of champagne, potent storms crossed the Philly region Tuesday night, prompting tornado and flood warnings.
The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings for parts of Chester and Delaware Counties and northern Delaware. The warning area included Chester city and Wilmington, where a funnel cloud reportedly was sighted, the weather service said.
It was not yet known if any twisters had touched down.
The federal Storm Prediction Center, which issued the general twister advisory, also had the entire region under a severe thunderstorm watch until 10 p.m.
The weather service also had posted numerous flash-flood and severe-storm warnings. The agency posted a report of “multiple” homes flooded in West Brandywine Township, Chester County,
Rainfall this summer has been maddeningly capricious, but this time it appeared that the entire region is going to win some share of the rain lottery proceeds, wanted or not.
“I think this is the type of setup where everyone is going to get rain,” said Marc Chernard, senior branch forecasters with the federal Weather Prediction Center, in College Park, Md. The center had Philadelphia and its neighboring counties targeted for “excessive rainfall” potential.
For flood potential, what would matter would be the rainfall rates, and it’s possible the skies could wring out localized amounts of 3 inches an hour, said Chernard.
Storms could be quite potent, said Patrick O’Hara, meteorologist at the Mount Holly office. The weather service warned that a “few tornadoes” are possible.
“Some of the stuff in Delmarva, South Jersey, maybe even Philadelphia, may be spinning.” said O’Hara. “Welcome to July weather in Philadelphia.”
People caught in the heavy rain storm as they cross the street in Philadelphia Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in University City.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
The likeliest time for strong storms in the Philly region
An early batch of strong storms is likely to miss Philly and most of the afternoon may be rain-free, but a second round late in the day into the evening won’t, O’Hara said, with a round of soaking downpours likely.
“That will be just torrents,” he said. He expected the heaviest of the rains to appear around 6 or 7 p.m.
Said Chernard, “It could be a lot of rain that comes around quickly.”
The system triggering the rain is something of a hybrid, born of a pattern more common to the cooler weather of fall and spring when temperature contrasts in the atmosphere are sharper, O’Hara said.
“We have a situation where we have summertime heat and humidity, but almost out-of-season dynamics,” he said.
Whatever the cause, the storms could have “significant impacts,” said Chernard.
Chernard said he expected the worst of the rains to move out of the region later Tuesday night; however, the shut-off time remains uncertain.
And neither the Delaware nor Schuylkill Rivers are in imminent danger of sloshing over.
However, rain rates of 2 or 3 inches of hour are enough to generate flash flooding along streams. During a localized downpour on Monday, Pennypack Creeks in the Northeast rose to minor flood stage.
Heavy rains flooded downtown streets and swamped cars in Hammonton, Atlantic County.
How much for Philly?
With July thunderstorms it isn’t simply a question of how much for Philly, but how much for South Philly, Center City, Germantown, or Fox Chase.
Even though everyone might get rain, the heaviest rains will be concentrated, said Chernard.
What is almost certain is that some places are going to get a soaking.
With over a half-foot of rain measured already, what has been Philadelphia’s wettest month since March 2024 is very likely to become significantly wetter.
The National Weather Service has posted a flash flood watch effective from 8 a.m. Tuesday until 2 p.m. Wednesday for rain totals up to 3 inches, with downpours of 1 to 2 inches an hour possible.
The national Storm Prediction Center on Tuesday morning listed a 15% chance of severe storms, those with wind gusts approaching 60 mph, for the entire region, with an outside shot of tornadoes. The Weather Prediction Center has a 40% chance of flooding downpours.
Some appetizers — localized downpours — popped up Monday afternoon, prompting flood warnings for Philly and neighboring sections of Montgomery County, and parts of Gloucester and Atlantic Counties in New Jersey.
Floodwaters swamped downtown Hammonton, Atlantic County, with “numerous” cars stranded on the roads, the weather service reported. The Pennypack Creek in Northeast Philly crested above “minor” flood stage.
Moth-ball-size hail pelted Chestnut Hill, and hail twice that size was sighted in Williamstown, Gloucester County, and in the vicinity of Washington Crossing State Park on the Jersey side of the Delaware River.
Storm coverage on Tuesday is expected to be far more extensive, and potentially more disruptive, with a “few tornadoes” possible, the weather service warned.
Storm activity is likely to linger into Wednesday, said Mike Lee, meteorologist in the weather service’s Mount Holly office, with more showers in the forecasts for Thursday.
What time the storms will arrive in Philly
Late July still is very much the lottery-ball season for damaging downpours, and that again likely will be very much in evidence this week. Rainfall totals in the last 30 days have ranged from 137% of normal in Gloucester County to 79% of normal in Montgomery County, according to the Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center.
Thunderstorms are possible as early as midmorning, but expect “repeated rounds” during the afternoon, said Matt Benz, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc.
The highest probability for severe storms, those with wind gusts near 60 mph, would be in South Jersey and Delaware, although they could nose into Philly, said the weather service’s Lee.
The storms could continue well into the night, and additional rains are expected Wednesday afternoon.
The rain totals again are likely to vary widely; however, a general 1 to 2 inches is expected across the region.
Whatever happened to the drought?
It hasn’t gone anywhere — yet.
All of New Jersey and Chester County remain under state-declared drought warnings. In the latest interagency U.S. Drought Monitor update, conditions in the entire region remain from “abnormally dry” to severe drought.
All that may change by week’s end.
Through Sunday, officially 6.37 inches of rain habr been measured at Philadelphia International Airport this month. That is the highest monthly precipitation total since March 2024.
July’s rains have ended a run of 16 straight months of below-normal precipitation in Philly.
Said Benz: “It’s an old saying that all droughts end on a flood. That’s kind of what we’re seeing right now.”
John Alviti, 76, of Flourtown, Montgomery County, retired innovative senior curator at the Franklin Institute, former executive director at the Atwater Kent Museum, adjunct professor of urban studies, and “Mr. Philadelphia History” to family and friends, died Saturday, June 20, of complications from heart and kidney disease at Jefferson Abington Hospital.
Born in Chicago and devoted to history and his South Side White Sox baseball team, Mr. Alviti came to Philadelphia in the 1970s to pursue a doctorate in history and urban studies at Temple University. He never got that doctorate.
But he fell in love with Philadelphia’s history and architecture, got married, settled down in Flourtown, and, for 34 years, was one of the region’s most influential museum curators and historians. Affable, creative, and energetic, by all accounts, Mr. Alviti became a groundbreaking executive director at the now-closed Atwater Kent Museum in 1982 and celebrated curator at the Franklin Institute in 1994.
Even after he retired in 2018, he was known around town as “Mr. Philadelphia History.”
Mr. Alviti displayed this 5-foot-long fragment of a lightning rod designed by Benjamin Franklin at the Franklin Institute in 2010. Michael S. Wirtz / Staff Photographer
At the Atwater Kent, Mr. Alviti updated exhibits on William Penn, the history of Philadelphia, the old Enchanted Colonial Village display, and local cemeteries. He added maritime and archaeology galleries.
At a gala to celebrate the museum in 1984, A. Atwater Kent Jr., son of the museum founder, said Mr. Alviti “has done a great job of creating interesting exhibits and improving the museum.”
At the Franklin Institute, he reorganized its huge inventory, redecorated the galleries, digitalized many artifacts, and created popular exhibits regarding the Wright Brothers, Benjamin Franklin, antique machines, X-rays, and dozens of other scientific subjects.
“He loved objects,” said his wife, Maryellen. “He loved the history of objects and telling their story.”
This story and photo of Mr. Alviti (left) was published in The Inquirer in 1998.Newspapers.com
In 1998, Mr. Alviti told The Inquirer: “Besides the curator of stuff, I’m also the curator of institutional memory. And institutional memory is more than just simply the facts about what happened in the past. It’s about the legacy of an institution … and how it informs our thinking and decision-making.”
He was also adept at merging his collections with educational programs, and he helped organize the city’s National History Day competition for students, the Phil-A-Kid hands-on history workshop for fourth and fifth graders, the Peopling of Philadelphia research project, and the Curatorial Capers summer day camp program. Often, in a nod to the ever-present protective gloves he wore to handle the artifacts, he introduced himself as “Johnny Whitegloves.”
“There are some curators who think I’m crazy,” he told The Inquirer. But a public presentation, he said, “really demonstrates the power of an object.”
Mr. Alviti also led walking tours of the city for visiting colleagues from the Oral History Association, the Organization of American Historians, and other groups. He admired and worked closely with amateur historians, and led the successful effort in 1981 to save the historic Lit Bros. building complex on Market Street from demolition.
Mr. Alviti and his wife, Maryellen, married in 1983.Courtesy of the family
Between the Atwater Kent and the Franklin Institute, Mr. Alviti spent two years as director of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. He was an expert on public transportation and taught urban studies, American history, and museum training at Temple and Stockton Universities, Rutgers University-Camden, and elsewhere.
He was onetime curator of historic Fort Mifflin and president of what is now the Museum Council of Greater Philadelphia. He was on the advisory board of the old Philadelphia Alliance for Teaching Humanities in the Schools and active with the American Association of Museums and other groups.
“He had a gift for making friends for life,” longtime friend Margaret Marsh said, “and he had a legendary generosity of spirit.” Longtime friend Howard Gillette said: “He never met a stranger.”
John Vincent Alviti was born Sept. 22, 1949. A lifelong avid reader, he earned a bachelor’s degree in urban studies and history at Lewis University in Illinois in 1971 and a master’s degree in history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1975.
The photo and a story about Mr. Alviti and his city walking tours appeared in The Inquirer in 1996.Newspapers.com
He played piano and clarinet, and sang in choirs in high school and college. “He left Chicago when he was 25 or 26,” said his younger sister, Rosemarie Alviti Babic, “but never stopped loving the city.”
He met Maryellen Coonahan when she took an urban studies class he was teaching at Temple, and they married in 1983 and lived in Philadelphia, Washington, and Flourtown. Together, they traveled the world and visited museums in London, Rome, Athens, Madrid, and elsewhere.
Mr. Alviti enjoyed puzzles, games, and conversation. He lived with a heart condition for most of his life and was the lovable “Uncle Johnny” to his nieces and nephews. “He is missed beyond words,” said his niece Lindsay Hogan.
He was fascinated by urban architecture and city life around the world, and he routinely bought food and drink for people without homes, picked up litter, and offered correct directions to those who looked lost.
Mr. Alviti (right) enjoyed time with family and friends.Courtesy of the family
“He was a curious fellow,” his wife said, “who loved to help people.”
In addition to his wife, sister, and niece, Mr. Alviti is survived by a sister, Rita Jo Alviti Coyne, a brother, James, and other relatives.
