This Date in Weather History

The SS Princess Sophia sank on Oct. 25, 1918, with estimates of the death toll ranging up to 367. No one on board survived, save one pet dog who swam to shore. The ship was one of four coastal liners operated by the Canadian Pacific Railway, all named for princesses. The Princess Sophia had departed Skagway, Alaska, on Oct. 23, 1918, with stops planned in Juneau, Wrangell and Ketchikan before going to Prince Rupert, Alert Bay and eventually Vancouver. The following day at 2 a.m., just south of Skagway and 40 miles north of Juneau, the Princess Sophia struck a reef. Slightly off course in bad weather of fog and snow, it was going full steam, rode up onto the rocks and struck aground. The great ship remained stuck for 40 hours, enough time for rescue boats to arrive. But stormy conditions and high tides made it too risky to abandon ship. Rescue boat crews chose to return to port and come back the following day, the 26th, when weather was expected to improve – when the rescue boats returned – the ship was gone – only bits of wreckage floated on the surface. The Princess Sophia had been lifted off the reef and sank, leaving no survivors. The bad weather had not only caused the wreck, but prevented the rescue.

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Hurricane Wilma made landfall as a Category 3 system near Key West, and later near Everglades City, Florida On October 24, 2005. Wilma had earlier made landfall on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula as a Category 4 system. Wilma, the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, reached a low pressure of 26.04 inches, surpassing the previous Atlantic record holder of Gilbert. Wilma, the first Atlantic storm to use the letter “W” formed as a Tropical Depression southwest of Jamaica on October 15th, becoming a hurricane on October 18th and later becoming the 5th Category 5 hurricane of the season. Wilma produced a storm surge of 4’ to 8’, flooded portions of the Keys dropped 10 tornadoes over Florida and yielded 3” to 7” of rain across Florida. Wilma directly was attributed to 5 deaths in Florida, knocked power out to 98 percent of  South Florida and produced an estimated $12.2 billion in damage.

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In 1878, a storm formed near Jamaica then became a Category 2 hurricane and moved right up the East coast. The center passed east of Florida, then came ashore in eastern North Carolina on October 23, 1878 and stayed inland until it turned almost straight east over the southern parts of Vermont and New Hampshire. There was extensive damage from the Carolinas to New England, and more than 71 people were killed. This storm came to be known as the Gale of '78. A storm in modern times with a track like the Gale of ‘78 would be disastrous in the Middle Atlantic states, threatening death and serious injury and causing billions of dollars in damage. Hurricane Hazel in 1954 took a similar track, all the rest of the hurricanes with somewhat similar tracks occurred in the 19th century.

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Late October often brings northern New England its first taste of the winter season with cold weather and snow. Even though some of the mountainous regions may receive a few inches of snow it’s usually not much more than a nuance. On October 22, 1969 cold air was firmly in place as a storm moved up the east coast of the United States. The result was an early season heavy snowstorm; the heaviest and earliest in New England in almost 50 years. Rochester, Vermont had 12"; with even more in mountain areas. Some Vermont ski resorts actually had limited skiing on the 23rd. The 5.1" at Burlington, VT was a 24-hour October record. Portland, ME had an early season record of 3.6".

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An area of thunderstorms formed on the west coast of Africa in mid-October 1988 just as swarms of locusts were inundating the region. The storms had loosely held together until they reached the central Atlantic Ocean a few days later were conditions where favorable for further tropical development. The system rapidly developed into Tropical storm and then Hurricane Joan. Winds high in the atmosphere carried Hurricane Joan across the Atlantic to Dominica, St. Lucia, Jamaica, and other nearby islands. In addition to heavy rains, Joan brought those islands something else from the sky on October 21, 1988, locusts. Apparently carried into the atmosphere by winds blowing from those thunderstorms that formed on the African coast days earlier, the locusts survived the trip across the Atlantic and found a new home in the Caribbean.

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On October 20, 1991, the hills across the bay from San Francisco were cloaked in smoke. Flames moved up the steep slopes of Oakland and Berkeley, California, What became known as the Diablo Fire had started on Saturday, October 19, from an incompletely extinguished grass fire in the Berkeley Hills. Firefighters fought the 5-acre fire on a steep hillside and by Saturday night they thought it was under control. The fire re-ignited as a brush fire shortly before 11 a.m. on Sunday, October 20 and rapidly spread southwest, driven by wind gusts up to 65 mph. It quickly overwhelmed local and regional firefighting resources. By 11:30 a.m., the fire had spread to the nearby Parkwoods Apartments. Shortly before noon, the fire had been blown up to the top of Hiller Highlands to the west, from where it began its sweep down into the Hiller Highlands development and the southern hills of Berkeley. Burning embers from houses and vegetation were carried ahead of the fire line by torrid winds and started new blazes ahead of the original burn. Within thirty minutes the fire had crossed both Highway 24, an eight-lane freeway, and Highway 13, a four-lane freeway, eventually igniting hundreds of houses in the Forest Park neighborhood. The hot, dry northeasterly winds, dubbed as “Diablo winds” " in reference to the Diablo Mountain range and surrounding geography of same name, periodically occur during the early fall season. These are similar to the Santa Ana wind in Southern California, and have been the cause of numerous devastating fires.

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Heavy rain fell across West Virginia on October 19, 1961 as a strong storm moved up the east coast. At the same time cold air was moving southward through the Great Lakes region and into the Ohio valley. Because the storm was moving slowly the cold air moved in behind the storm before it moved away and out to sea. The rain changed to a record early, heavy, wet snow over the southern mountains of West Virginia – several places in the high terrain got more than a foot of the white stuff. Leaves were still on the trees, resulting in the worst forest disaster since forest fires in the state in 1952. Reports from the time said that “It got on the power lines and froze and broke some of those. The trees had such heavy loads of snow and leaves on them. They fell down across the roads and across the power lines.” Thousands had no power for weeks until it was restored.

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A strong Hurricane battered western Cuba in the middle of October 1910. The system then headed northeastward across southern Florida dumping heavy rain and causing high water to inundate southeastern Florida with water many feet above sea level. Many of the barrier islands that today house cities like Miami Beach where covered over with water – but there was little built up on those islands and so damage was minimal. One strange impact of the hurricane was that because it moved very slowly with strong constantly blowing winds from the direction of the northeast all across the region, that on the west coast of Florida the wind then was blowing away from the land and so the opposite of a storm surge occurred. On October 18, 1910 the wind actually blew the water out of Tampa Bay and the Hillsboro River and pushed it into the Gulf of Mexico. The water level lowered to 9 feet below average low water; and there was little water left for several hours in the river and Tampa Bay, 40 ships were grounded. It was the exact opposite of a storm surge.

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Early on the morning of October 17, 1781, Lieutenant General Charles, Lord Cornwallis, found himself hunkered down in a cave near the southern shoreline of the York River. Above him was the disintegrating town of Yorktown, Virginia, now being systematically bombarded into rubble by American and French cannon fire. Cornwallis understood that imminent surrender was the certain fate of his entrapped military force, an army that consisted of about 8,000 British, Hessian, and loyalist soldiers, in addition to their wives and even children. An attempted breakout had failed just hours before. A sudden storm disrupted an effort to move his army northward across the York River to Gloucester Point—and possible escape. Now with the ground continually shaking all around him, Cornwallis prepared to order a white flag hoisted above his battered entrenchments. The weather most certainly did not determine the entire outcome of the battle, but it hastened the British defeat. This was not the first time that the weather impacted the Revolution and almost each time in favor of the rebels. From the sudden fog that provided cover and allowed Washington and his troops to evade capture after the battle of Long Island, to the victories in the snow at Trenton and the mud of Saratoga. By the afternoon of October 19, the British officers and soldiers laid down their arms. Their drummers and fifers, with black ribbons attached to their instruments, played various tunes. Legend has persisted that one was the mournful melody “The World Turned Upside Down.” Whether true or not, Yorktown turned the world upside down for the colonists’ former masters and, as such, represented a defining moment of triumph in the American experience. The war continued in the West Indies and other parts of the globe into 1783, but Yorktown set in motion a train of diplomatic events that resulted in Britain’s official recognition of American independence.

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An early snowstorm dropped several inches of snow through portions of the Northeast on October 16, 2009. Normally snow during this time of year easily melts on most surfaces with ground and air temperatures usually above the freezing mark. To overcome this, in order for snow to pile up, it has to snow very hard and that is what it did. In Coudersport, PA 10” of snow fell. Other Pennsylvania cities like Wellsboro and Haneyville had 8” of snow. Nearly 3” fell in South Vestal, NY. Lesser amounts fell in other places, but in most of these areas early snowfall records were broken. Since the snow arrived this early there were still leaves on the trees leading to several power outages and downed tree limbs.

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