This Date in Weather History

Apollo 12 was the sixth crewed flight in the United States Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon. It was launched on November 14, 1969. Apollo 12 launched on schedule from Kennedy Space Center, under completely overcast rainy skies, encountering wind speeds of 174.6 mph during ascent, the highest of any Apollo mission. Lightning struck the Saturn V rocket 36.5 seconds after lift-off, triggered by the vehicle itself, discharging down to the Earth through the ionized exhaust plume. Protective circuits detected overloads and took all three fuel cells offline, along with much of the command service module or CSM instrumentation. A second strike at 52 seconds knocked out more equipment. However, the Saturn V continued to fly normally; the strikes had not affected the guidance system, which functions independently from the CSM. The loss of all three fuel cells put the CSM entirely on batteries, which were unable to maintain normal 75-ampere launch loads on the 28-volt DC bus. These power supply problems lit nearly every warning light on the control panel and caused much of the instrumentation to malfunction. Electrical manager John Aaron remembered the telemetry failure pattern from an earlier test when a power supply malfunctioned in the CSM signal conditioning electronics which converted raw signals from instrumentation to standard voltages for the spacecraft instrument displays and telemetry encoders. Aaron made a call which switched the SCE to a backup power supply. The switch was fairly obscure, but Lunar Module Pilot Alan Bean, flying in the right seat as the spacecraft systems engineer, remembered the SCE switch from a training incident a year earlier when the same failure had been simulated. Aaron's quick thinking and Bean's memory saved the mission. Bean put the fuel cells back on line, and with telemetry restored, the launch continued successfully. The lightning strikes had caused no serious permanent damage.

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Wintry cold is certainly a feature of November, especially across the northern plains, Rockies and Great Lakes in the United States. Usually though, persistent arctic cold is not the rule. In fact, the average is for temperatures in that region to remain cold in the first half of the month of November for a short time of just a day or two, perhaps three. On November 13, 2014 an amazing stretch of early winter cold came to an end. Readings on that day reached a high temperature of 32 degrees in Chicago ending a 7-consecutive-day streak of sub 32 Degrees high temperatures. The below freezing cold lasted 180 consecutive hours, or more than 7 days in a row, that stands as a record for November.

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On average less than 10 record high and low temperatures are set in any one location each year and for most locations the average is less than 5. Of course, the length of time that records have been kept has a major impact on this. Many locations in the United State have kept high and low temperature records for more than a century. Philadelphia’s records are about 150 years old. The longest continuous record keeping of record high and low temperatures belongs to Hadley Centre in England. In 1659 they first started the record daily high and low temperatures and have not stopped since. In the United states a record for heat or cold is set once every other month. It is an unusual occurrence. But on November 12, 1911 in Buffalo, New York a remarkable thing happened, a record high and low on the same day. 69 degrees just after midnight on the 12th was the highest ever recorded on that date, then a strong cold front came through and dropped the temperature to 22 degrees late that evening. Both records. Two in one day.

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On November 11, 1987 and major snowstorms struck the nations' capital. During the Veteran's Day Storm almost a foot of snow fell at National Airport. Prince Georges County, MD was hard hit with up to 13 inches of snow falling in a short amount of time. It caught motorists off guard and stranded cars on the Capital Beltway. There were so many cars that snow plows could not get through to open the clogged arteries. Cars littered the roadway for more than 24 hours. The event precipitated the development of the Washington Metropolitan Area Snow Plan to facilitate preparedness and response to future storms. The storm struck before the days of lightning detection networks and Doppler weather radar. Thunderstorms began dumping heavy snow over Fredericksburg VA, then the storm moved northeast across the southern Metropolitan area and fast accumulating snow hit Camp Springs. The result was a singular localized event. Outside of the Washington DC immediate area not more than a few inches of snow fell from the storm.

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Tropical Storm Ida made landfall near Mobile, Alabama during the morning hours of November 10, 2009. According to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, about 30 percent of oil production in the Gulf was shut down on the 9 as Ida neared the Gulf Coast. Port Alabama, AL reported a wind gust of 62 mph while West Mobile, Al and Destin, FL had wind gusts of 43 mph as Ida came ashore. Soaking rain from Ida spread from Alabama into Southern Virginia and the Carolina’s. The following are some daily rainfall records were set. But the biggest impact occurred because of those shutdown oil rigs causing the price of oil to spike for the next week or so as gasoline prices soared.

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On November 9, 1913 the Famous Great Lakes Storm hit and 270 lives lost. Buffalo had 80 mph winds; Cleveland 22.2" of snow; Pickens, WV had a 36" snowfall; Pittsburgh 12.5" of snow. The Great Storm of November 1913 has been celebrated as the "Freshwater Fury" in several books and many articles as the most disastrous in the area’s history. The storm began at Port Huron, MI at 2am on November 9, 1913 and reached maximum force around 4pm when the wind rose to an extreme speed of 62 mph from the north. At Cleveland, OH the wind averaged 50-mph for most of the day, and the extreme was 79 mph. Buffalo had a peak wind of 80 mph from the southwest. The depth of the storm was indicated by the lowest barometer of 28.61" at Erie, PA. Ten large ships of 300 feet or more lost, seven more were total wrecks on reefs, and ten additional were severely damaged in a grounding across the Great Lakes. At least 270 sailors were lost, and countless others were badly injured or crippled by exposure. The storm was accompanied by below freezing temperatures and gave Cleveland its biggest single snowstorm - 22.2".

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The history of weather observations and weather information in North America is certainly older than the arrival of Europeans to the western Hemisphere. Native indigenous peoples had been astute observers of the weather for centuries. Building seasonal clocks and monuments to help track the changes in temperatures and rainfall, Native peoples across the Southern part of what would become the united States were prodigious farmers and relied heavily of seasonal patterns. Founders of the Republic from Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Jefferson were keen recorders of the weather and tried their hand at weather forecasts. More organized approaches were left for a later era. Starting in 1849 the Smithsonian Institution supplied weather instruments to telegraph companies and establishes extensive observation network. Observations submitted by telegraph to the Smithsonian, where weather maps are created. By 1860, 500 stations are making regular observations. In 1869, Telegraph service, instituted in Cincinnati, began collecting weather data and producing weather charts. The ability to observe and display simultaneously observed weather data, through the use of the telegraph, quickly led to initial efforts toward the next logical advancement, the forecasting of weather. However, the ability to observe and forecast weather over much of the country, required considerable structure and organization, which could be provided through a government agency. In 1870, A Joint Congressional Resolution requiring the Secretary of War "to provide for taking meteorological observations at the military stations in the interior of the continent, and at other points in the States and Territories...and for giving notice on the northern lakes and on the seacoast, by magnetic telegraph and marine signals, of the approach and force of storms" was introduced. Congress passed the resolution and on February 9, 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed it into law. A new national weather service had been born within the U.S. Army Signal Service’s Division of Telegrams and Reports for the Benefit of Commerce that would affect the daily lives of most of the citizens of the United States through its forecasts and warnings for years to come. The on November 8, 1870 the First storm warning by U.S. Signal Corps weather service was issued for Great Lakes area by Prof. Latham of Milwaukee marking the first ever official weather forecasted warning issued in the United States.

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The first Tacoma Narrows bridge was locally known as “Galloping Gertie,” since its slender design lacked stabilizing girders, causing it to twist and bounce in the wind. The bridge opened on July 1, 1940, after 29 months of construction and $18 million invested. On the first day of operations, 2,053 crossed the bridge after an inaugural parade of vehicles led by Gov. Clarence D. Martin and Tacoma Mayor Harry P. Cain. But Gertie’s life would be short-lived. A little over four months later, on Nov. 7 of the same year, the bridge collapsed during a massive windstorm. The high winds struck the Tacoma-Narrows Bridge at a critical angle and caused vibrations to set up, which eventually collapsed the bridge. Maximum wind speed, 31 mph in downtown Tacoma; probably higher over Puget Sound. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, with a main span of 2,800 feet was the third-longest suspension bridge in the world at that time, Because planners expected fairly light traffic volumes, the bridge was designed with two lanes, and it was just 39 feet wide. This was quite narrow, especially in comparison with its length. With only the 8-foot-deep plate girders providing additional depth, the bridge's roadway section was also shallow. The decision to use such shallow and narrow girders proved to be the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge's undoing. With such minimal girders, the deck of the bridge was insufficiently rigid and was easily moved about by winds; from the start, the bridge became infamous for its movement. A mild to moderate wind could cause alternate halves of the center span to visibly rise and fall several feet over four- to five-second intervals. This flexibility was experienced by the builders and workmen during construction, which led some of the workers to christen the bridge "Galloping Gertie". The nickname soon stuck, and even the public felt these motions on the day that the bridge opened on July 1, 1940. The failure of the bridge occurred when a never-before-seen twisting mode occurred, from winds at 40 miles per hour. This is a so-called torsional vibration mode, whereby when the left side of the roadway went down, the right side would rise, and vice versa simply put the two halves of the bridge twisted in opposite directions, with the center line of the road remaining motionless. This vibration was caused by aeroelastic flutter. Fluttering is a physical phenomenon in which a structure becomes coupled in an unstable oscillation driven by the wind. Eventually, the amplitude of the motion produced by the fluttering increased beyond the strength of a vital part, in this case the suspender cables. As several cables failed, the weight of the deck transferred to the adjacent cables, which became overloaded and broke in turn until almost all of the central deck fell into the water below the span.

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On the morning of November 6, 1953, AccuWeather Founder and CEO Joel Myers peddled his bicycle to school in Philadelphia wearing only a thin jacket. He said that “Just a few days before the temperature had been in the seventies but then it was about 50 degrees. The radio mentioned colder weather and chance of a snow flurry in the afternoon ... well it began to snow by noontime and by mid-afternoon we were in the midst of a tremendous snowstorm ... big flakes and gusty winds. After school I pushed my bicycle home through heavy blowing snow as winds gusted to 50 miles an hour, and temperatures fell below freezing. By the next morning... snow accumulations across eastern Pennsylvania ranged from 3-30". Officially a little less than 4” of snow fell in Philadelphia but that was still enough to make it a record snowfall for so early in the season, the far northern and western suburbs were paralyzed by almost 30” of heavy wet snow that took a week to clean up.

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Verkhoyansk, Russia is notable chiefly for its exceptionally low winter temperatures and some of the greatest temperature differences on Earth between summer and winter. Average monthly temperatures range from 50 below zero F in January to almost 62 F in July. Average monthly temperatures are below freezing from October through April but climb above 50 °F from June through August, with the intervening months of May and September constituting very short transitional seasons. Verkhoyansk is located within the Arctic Circle. The lowest temperature recorded there, in February 1892, was 90.0 °F below zero, recorded on February 5 and 7. Only Antarctica has recorded lower temperatures than Verkhoyansk. In this area temperature inversions consistently form in winter due to the extremely cold and dense air, so that temperatures increase rather than decrease with higher altitude. In Verkhoyansk it sometimes happens that the average minimum temperatures for January, February, and December are below −58 ° F. Verkhoyansk is one of the only two permanently populated places in the world that have recorded temperatures below −76.0 °F every day of January.  In its short summer, daytime temperatures over 86 °F are not uncommon. On June 20, 2020, Verkhoyansk recorded a temperature of 100.4 °F, yielding a record temperature range of 190.4 °F based on reliable records, and that is the greatest temperature range in the world. It was also the highest temperature above the Arctic Circle ever recorded. Only a handful of towns in Siberia and Canada have temperature ranges of 180 °F or more. Verkhoyansk has never recorded a temperature above freezing between November 10 and March 14. On November 5, 1992 warm weather in Verkhoyansk was a fleeting thought with a morning low of -51 degrees, high of -46 degrees. The daily average temperature was 27 degrees below normal.

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