This Date in Weather History

Ice along the Texas Gulf coast is not unknown, but it is a rarity to accumulate more than a thin ice coating, mainly on bridges and overpasses. Usually when that icing does occur it happening in the early morning hours and the common practice is simply to let it melt as the sun rises and heats up the roadways enough to raise the temperature above freezing to melt that ice and end the slippery conditions. On January 13, 1997 an ice storm glazed the Houston, TX area as well as parts of Louisiana. This time, temperatures were not just a degree of two below freezing but rather in the mid 20’s, so 1/2” thick ice formed from Beaumont, TX to Lake Charles, LA. The normal method of simply letting the ice melt would not work unless those in the region waited for several days. With little salt on hand, like the stockpiles in the northern states, the local highway departments needed to improvise using road graders and front loaders to dump gravel used in road construction and cinders from local incinerators to cover the highways to allow motorists to gain traction.

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Afghanistan is no stranger to winter cold and snow. Much of the country is mountainous and the higher terrain is conducive to bitter cold winter temperatures and snow. Major snow storms are not common – but not terribly unusual either. On January 11, 2008, a massive winter storm blasted the country with a wind-wiped heavy snowfall. Dozens were killed by the heavy snow and freezing weather as snow blocked roads connecting remote areas to many of the cities and towns in the country. Around 35 employees of a construction company were trapped in an avalanche in Herat. The clean-up and resources from that avalanche and several others was problematic at best. The war-ravaged nation was still in the midst of bitter conflict and the ability to clean up the snowfall and protect against the cold was virtually impossible as those normal resources were consumed by the ongoing conflict – just another terrible by-product of war.

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The first week of January 1918 brought a persistent bitter cold the upper Midwest and the great lakes region. In many places high temperatures barely reached the freezing mark. Already storages brought on by World War I were being felt in the region with scarcity of fuel to heat homes. Then an even colder air mass that had been building across the arctic regions of Canada plunged southward into the northern tier of the United States. Meanwhile a storm was brewing in the southern states, as that system swept northward it brought plenty of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico along with it. The result was a vast storm of blizzard proportions that moved through Great Lakes and Ohio Valley. Toledo had 63 mph winds and a temperature drop from +28 degrees to -15 degrees as the storm pulled the arctic air southward behind it. The result was a complete immobilization and no mail for 2 weeks in many parts of the Midwest.

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Snow, continuous and heavy with sustained winds estimated at 30-35 mph, gusting to 60 mph struck Edinboro, PA on January 10, 1982, as bitter cold air moved out of Canada and across the Great Lakes resulting in a massive diplay of Lake-effect snowfall. Mountainous drifts caused roads to be shut down. Between 3 and 4 feet of new snow, well above the waist on the level was reported. There was at least one report of a devastating “snow devil”. Miniature vortexes of wind can stir up snow in a formation known as a snow devil. Similar to a dirt devil, snow devils are spinning columns of snow. The reported stated that “It became dark at 4 pm, and a sudden strong gust of wind picked up a wall of snow and blew it about. It cleared somewhat, but then a definite funnel shaped vortex, swirling about at a rapid rate, knocked over an apple tree. The snow devil then proceeded to rip a 6-inch diameter cherry tree right out of the ground with the roots lying on top of the snow. The snow devil was about 20-25 feet in diameter and at least 100 feet tall. This was one of the most severe blizzards in this region in memory.”

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January 9, 1975 marked one of the coldest days across the parries of western Canada. Arctic cold had move out of Siberia and across Alaska and the Yukon and then southward. Along the southern fringes of the cold weather a storm laden with moisture from the Pacific Ocean had slammed into the pacific northwest of the United States and was moving eastward across Idaho and Montana. As the bitter cold air surged into the places like Winnipeg, Manitoba snow broke out. Fueled by the cold and that Pacific storm blizzard conditions quickly developed. As the snow piled up the airport in Winnipeg was forced to close and remained out of service for almost 2 days. Travel across the entire region ground to a halt as the blizzard reduced the visibility in Winnipeg to zero. People couldn’t even see a foot or two in front of them. The white-out continued for more than 12 hours.

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Bitter cold air moved westward out of Siberia in the first week of January 1981 and settled in across much of the European continent. Temperatures remained below freezing night and day in Germany and France and across the British isles and southward to the Mediterranean coast. Northern Italy and Greece were not spared the arctic chill. On the southern end of the Siberian airmass a large storm formed in north Africa and moved westward. By the time the powerful storm reached the southern part of Greece it resulted in 4 days of wild weather from January 8-11. Snow fell in parts of Greece as well as Tunisia where 2" accumulated. This was the first snow in Tunisia in 26 years. There were floods in Turkey and dust storms in Libya. Travel in those areas that experienced snow on the Mediterranean coast experienced travel disruptions for days.

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The “Blizzard of ‘96'” wreaked havoc across the eastern third of the United States. A powerful storm moved up the eastern seaboard and ran into very frigid air helping to produce traffic-stopping, life-disrupting snowfall totals. The major cities of Boston, MA, New York, NY, Philadelphia, PA & Washington DC became completely paralyzed. Philadelphia received a record 31" of snow, smashing the old record snowfall of 21.3" set in Feb. 1983. In parts of southern PA, snowdrifts were as high as 10'. As much as 4' of snow fell in the West Virginia Mountains. Nearly 2' of snow buried New York City. 29" was measured in Boston, MA. Winds gusted over 80 mph on the New Jersey shore. A total ban on travel was in put in effect in the eastern half of PA for 48 hours to aid in the clean-up and recuse stranded motorists. 35" fell in White Horse, NJ to set a state snowfall record

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Tropical Storm Zeta, the 26th and last storm of the 2005-2006 hurricane season, died off in the central Atlantic on January 6, 2006. This was the second storm to span two calendar years, the first being Hurricane Alice in 1954-1955. In current times the start of the Hurricane season triggers the re-start of the alphabet. The season officially kicks off on June 1st in the Atlantic basin. Sometimes tropical systems form in May or even April. In fact, there has been a named storm in every month of the year when compiling all the storms that have formed through history. Usually then when there is a natural break in the season and there has been no storm for a while the alphabet is restarted. Most of these modern protocols here established by the WMO, the World Meteorological Organization in the 1950s and 60’s with some refinements after that. That is why in the 2005-2006 season was still using the end of the alphabet with Zeta, but 1954-1955 before the rules where worked out the alphabet was already re-started with Alice.

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Lake-effect snow is produced during cooler atmospheric conditions when a cold air mass moves across long expanses of warmer lake water. The lower layer of air, heated up by the lake water, picks up water vapor from the lake and rises up through the colder air above; the vapor then freezes and is deposited on the downwind shores. But Lake-effect snow can actually occur when a lake is partially or even total frozen. That is because directional wind shear is one of the most important factors governing the development of snow squalls; environments with weak directional shear typically produce more intense squalls than those with higher shear levels. Frictional convergence is the major factor in producing the squalls. When the wind blows over an expanse of water – or even frozen lake – the air is flowing unimpeded, when it reaches the shoreline it slows as it comes into contact with the land and causes friction. There is only once place for the air to go and that is up. The lifting causes clouds and precipitation. When the wind blows in such a way that is turns counter-clockwise, the same direction as large-scale storms – that also aids in lift. When the lake is frozen the added element of temperature contrast and available moisture is added to the mix. This is most common around the Great Lakes in the United States and Canada. The snowfall totals can be prodigious, in a short period of time. On January 5, 1988 Heavy lake effect snows on the east side of Lake Ontario in upstate New York. So much snow fell that Interstate 81 was closed from Pulaski to Watertown for a week. As much as 45” of snow fell in less than 12 hours.

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The absolute worst winter in the 18th century was the “hard winter” of 1779-1780. The winter that year was bad. Durning the course of the winter, New Jersey had 26 snowstorms and 6 of those are considered to be blizzards! Every saltwater inlet from North Carolina to Canada froze over completely.  In fact, New York Harbor froze over with ice so thick that British soldiers were able to march from Manhattan to Staten Island. George Washington decided to place his army at Morristown, New Jersey for winter quarters. When they arrived at the encampment site in November 1779 there was already a foot of snow on the ground. The worst of the snowfalls dropped more than four feet of snow with snow drifts over six feet on January 4, 1780. The temperature only made it above freezing a couple times in the whole winter. Officers remembered ink freezing in their quill pens and one surgeon recorded that “we experienced one of the most tremendous snowstorms ever remembered; no man could endure its violence many minutes without danger to his life. … When the storm subsided, the snow was from four to six feet deep, obscuring the very traces of the roads by covering fences that lined them.” Because of the severity of the winter, provisioning almost 10,000 soldiers were nearly impossible. A soldier in the Connecticut Line, Joseph Plumb Martin remembered “We were absolutely literally starved; – I do solemnly declare that I did not put a single morsel of vitials into my mouth for four days and as many nights, except for a little black birch bark which I gnawed off a stick of wood, if that can be called food. I saw several of the men roast their old shoes and eat them, and I was afterward informed by one of the officer’s waiters, that some of the officers killed and ate a favorite little dog that belonged to one of them.” Even General Washington noted after the winter that “The oldest people now living in this Country do not remember so hard a winter as the one we are now emerging from. In a word the severity of the frost exceeded anything of the kind that had ever been experienced in this climate before.” The Continental army remained in camp until the end of May 1780 recuperating from the harsh winter. It would still be more than a year until the decisive battle of the war in Yorktown, Virginia and Washington’s army would still struggle to overcome battle and nature – but none as harsh as that winter.

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