This Date in Weather History

The late summer of 1786 had been ideal for the growing of pumpkins and corn in Pennsylvania. In fact, pumpkin patches in central Pennsylvania, especially around the Susquehanna Valley were brimming with pumpkins. The ground was moist from a wet summer and the soil somewhat saturated. Then in early October torrential rainfall caused the Susquehanna River to flood. Reports from that time stated the river was anywhere between six and 10 feet higher than normal. These flood waters washed away the usual debris, in addition to homes and unharvested crops like corn and pumpkins. Large numbers of pumpkins were seen floating down the river on October 5, 1786, and people of the time dubbed it the 'Great Pumpkin Flood.'

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Late on October 2, 1867 a hurricane formed in the Gulf of Mexico. Holding its intensity, the storm system paralleled the Texas coastline, causing "many" deaths. A storm tide value of 7 feet was reported in Ludlum, and it is possible that Brownsville, Texas, was in the western eyewall of the hurricane at the storms closest approach. Turning toward Louisiana, the storm made landfall in the state with winds of 100 mph, as a Category 2 storm on October 4. Moving to the east and weakening, the storm made landfall on the state of Florida during the day on October 6. Holding its strength while crossing the Sunshine state, the tropical storm re-emerged into Atlantic waters. Taking a slight turn to the north, it dissipated off the coast of North Carolina on October 9. The hurricane struck Texas, near the mouth of the Rio Grande, and devastated Brownsville and Matamous. Because of the devastating effects in these three, state authorities sought help from the governors of two Mexican states. Relief was also sent from Veracruz, Mexico. The entire population of Bagdad Texas fled, while Matamoros was left nearly in ruins. The official death toll in the area was unknown, but local accounts stated there were at least 26 dead. Entire families disappeared from the area.  Most buildings in Brazoa Santiago were leveled. Clarksville, two miles inland, was also devastated and shortly later abandoned. Galveston, had suffered mightily in an intense hurricane just 30 years earlier and would be hit by the worst natural disaster in American history a little more than 30 years later when the 1900 hurricane killed 6-12,000 people. The city was already in the midst of a yellow fever epidemic, was flooded by a storm surge. The mainland rail bridge, a hotel and hundreds of homes in the city were washed away. Twelve schooners and a river steamboat were wrecked in the bay there and wharves destroyed. On October 3 high seas and heavy rains flooded New Orleans. Bath houses and a saw mill there were blown away. High winds and heavy rainfall continued across southeast Louisiana until October 6, inflicting great damage on crops.

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Like everyone else, Benjamin Franklin was affected by weather; but unlike most people of his time, he tried to explain the reasons for various weather-related phenomena, and even discovered some ways to predict the weather. One of Franklin's first recorded observations of weather patterns occurred in October of 1743, when he planned to observe an eclipse of the moon. As Franklin prepared to watch the eclipse in Philadelphia, a storm moved in and clouds obscured the moon. Later he learned that people in Boston, hundreds of miles northeast of Philadelphia, were able to see the eclipse because the storm didn't arrive there until several hours after the eclipse. Franklin became intrigued and continued gathering observations and eventually determined the direction of movement for storms. He was the first to observe that storms can move in an opposite direction from the direction of the wind. In other words, although the winds in a nor'easter blow from the northeast, the storm is actually moving from the southwest. In trying to explain how this weather pattern worked, Franklin accurately theorized about the existence of high and low pressure and proposed one of the first correct explanations for storm movement in the northern hemisphere. Franklin was interested in climate-related phenomena throughout his life. Just six years before his death, he published a number of "Meteorological Imaginations and Conjectures." For example, he was puzzled that hail and ice could occur in the summer time. While having no way to test his ideas, he correctly deduced that the upper atmosphere was much colder than the air below it. Moist air flowing into the upper atmosphere could produce ice that could fall to earth before it melted. He also wrote about fog, wind direction, insulation, and heat radiation. He kept extensive daily records pf the weather wherever he was. In 1751 he was one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia and urged that they keep records of the weather each day. On October 3, 1769 it was recorded that snow fell in Philadelphia and covered the ground the buildings. This still stands as the earliest covering of snow in Philadelphia.

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Moisture from Tropical Storm Octive led to destructive flooding across Arizona on October 2, 1983. Floodwaters that left 10 people dead or missing surged through normally bone-dry land, washing out bridges road and power forcing thousands from their homes, and turning a slice of desert Southwest into “a raging river”. Rivers swollen to record levels burst their banks amid heavy rains swallowing buildings and bridges causing millions of dollars in damage across a 200-mile swath of Arizona. Business districts and thousands of houses in Tucson, Clifton, Safford, Nagolas, and Marana were under several feet of water. A 4-foot high wall of water hit Tucson on as the Santa Cruz River crested closing all but one of the city’s bridges and knocking out major power lines to more than 20,000 homes and businesses. More than 4“ of rain fell in a 36-hour period. The peak flow estimated in the Santa Cruz River was 40,000. The greatest recorded previously, around 30,000 cfs or cubic feet per second, was in 1977. A 5- month-old, $500,000 office building was swept downstream when the banks of the Rillito River crumbled. Twenty-five miles downstream in Marana, the water spread out in a 3- mile swath, filling 100-foot-wide riverbed that usually stands dry. Clifton, about 100 miles northeast of Tucson on the San Francisco River, already had been hit so hard that there was little left to be damaged by further flooding. More than half the town been swept away, leaving the 4,200 residents without electricity, water, or phone service. Some businesses in downtown Clifton were under as much as 8 feet of water.

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Texas won its independence from Mexico and officially became the Republic of Texas on March 2, 1836, remaining an independent nation until February 19, 1846 when it entered the Union. On October 1, 1837 a year and a half after independence, the new nation had to struggle with its first large-scale national disaster. A hurricane formed off the coast of Africa and took more than a week to make the journey into the gulf of Mexico. Then on October 1 the storm wrought destruction along the entire coast of Texas. The settlement at Brazos Santiago was almost totally destroyed, with only a few buildings left standing, while all ships there were sunk or driven aground. Communities along the shores of Matagorda Bay were heavily damaged, with buildings and wharves swept away. Farther north, a 7 ft storm surge flooded Galveston Island, where nearly every building was lost, along with all supplies and provisions. Of the 30 vessels present in the harbor at Galveston when the storm began, only one remained moored following its passage. In one case, a ship was driven against a three-story warehouse, causing the building to collapse. Among the ships destroyed at Galveston were two Texas Navy Schooners. In a scene of "utter desolation", and a scene that would be played out many more times in Galveston during the next 100 years, and especially during the 1900 hurricane, some individuals in Galveston survived the flooding by holding on to floating debris for days. Floodwaters rushed over coastal prairies for up to 20 miles inland drowning livestock. The storm surge deposited ships in fields several miles inland, heavy surf action significantly altered the coastline at the entrance to Galveston Bay and Houston experienced a 4 ft rise in water levels. Despite the damage throughout coastal Texas, only two people are known to have died there. The storm then moved onto the east along the Gulf Coast of the United States and produced flooding in New Orleans of 8 feet and brought heavy rains all the way into the Carolinas.

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The Laguna Fire, was a 175,425-acre wildfire that burned from September 22, 1970 to October 4, 1970, and reached its height on September 30th in the Laguna Mountains and East County region and San Diego County in Southern California. It was the third-largest wildfire in the history of California at that time, after the Santiago Canyon Fire of 1889, and the Matilija Fire of 1932. It was one of many wildfires in a massive conflagration that spanned across the state from September 22 to October 4, 1970. The Laguna Fire of 1970 caused at least $234 million in 1970 USD in damages. The Laguna fire was started by downed power lines during Santa Ana winds in the Kitchen Creek area on the morning of September 26, 1970. In only 24 hours, it burned westward about 30 miles to the outskirts of El Cajon and Spring Valley. The fire devastated the communities of Harbison Canyon and Crest. In the end, the fire burned 175,425 acres and 382 homes, killing 16 people, before it was contained on October 4, 1970.

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On September 29, 1988 a strong cold front that blasted southward from central Canada in across the great plans of the United States. It produced flooding rains and severe weather across Missouri. Kansas City received 4" of rain and 60 mph winds during the late night and early morning hours, trapping rush hour commuters in their cars under 6’ of water. Lawrence, Kansas had golf ball sized hail and 80 mph winds. Extensive tree damage and power outages in the Kansas City metro area; 60 mph wind gusts at Kauffman Stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals, but no major damage was reported at the ballpark.

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The 1896 Cedar Keys hurricane was a powerful and destructive hurricane that devastated much of the East Coast of the United States, starting with Florida’s Cedar Keys, near the end of September 1896. The storm's rapid movement allowed it to maintain much of its intensity after landfall and cause significant damage over a broad area; as a result, it became one of the costliest United States hurricanes at the time. It formed by September 22, before crossing the Caribbean Sea just south of the Greater Antilles. It entered the Gulf of Mexico as the equivalent of a major hurricane on the, and struck the Cedar Keys—an offshore island chain that includes the island and city of Cedar Key—late on the night of September 28, 1896 with winds of 125 mph. The area was inundated by a devastating 10.5 ft storm surge that undermined buildings, washed out the connecting railroad to the mainland, and submerged the smaller, outlying islands, where 31 people were killed. The hurricane still had considerable strength when it entered southeastern Georgia. The winds brought down telephone, telegraph, and electric wires throughout the region, severing communications. Southern South Carolina also saw the damaging effects of the storm, which was accompanied by estimated winds of up to 100 mph. As the cyclone expanded and accelerated, it entered Virginia with renewed violence, and produced what still stands as the most severe windstorm in Richmond’s history. More destruction was occurred in the Washington DC area as well as Maryland and Pennsylvania. The system merged with a storm moving out of Canada and across the Great Lakes region producing gales and sinking ships in the Great Lakes.

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The year 1816 is known as the "Year Without a Summer", also the "Poverty Year" and "Eighteen Hundred and Froze To Death" because of severe climate abnormalities that caused average global temperatures to decrease by almost a degree and a half. Summer temperatures in Europe were the coldest on record between the years of 1766–2000. This resulted in major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere. Evidence suggests that this was caused predominantly what is called a volcanic winter event caused by the massive 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in April in the Dutch East Indies known today as Indonesia. This eruption was the largest in at least 1,300 years. In China the result was a massive famine. As a result of the series of prior volcanic eruptions, crops had been poor for several years; the final blow came in 1815 with the eruption of Tambora. Europe, still recuperating from the Napoleonic Wars, suffered from food shortages. The impoverished especially suffered during this time. Low temperatures and heavy rains resulted in failed harvests in Britain and Ireland. Families in Wales traveled long distances begging for food. Famine was prevalent in north and southwest Ireland, following the failure of wheat, oat, and potato harvests. In Germany, the crisis was severe. Food prices rose sharply throughout Europe and lead to peasant revolutions. In the spring and summer of 1816, a persistent "dry fog" was observed in parts of the eastern United States. The fog reddened and dimmed the sunlight, such that sunspots were visible to the naked eye. Neither wind nor rainfall dispersed the "fog". Because it was really not a fog at all – but the result of the dirt and debris hurled into the high atmosphere – the fog – so to speak was literally above the weather. The weather was not in itself a hardship for those accustomed to long winters. The real problem lay in the weather's effect on crops and thus on the supply of food and firewood. At higher elevations, where farming was problematic in good years, the cooler climate was not able support agriculture at all. On June 6, snow fell in Albany New York, frost was reported five nights in a row in late June, causing extensive crop damage as far south as Pennsylvania. New England also experienced major consequences from the eruption of Tambora. Though fruits and vegetable crops survived, corn was reported to have ripened so poorly that no more than a quarter of it was usable for food. This moldy and unripe harvest wasn't even fit for animal feed. The final blow came on September 27, 1816 when a killing frost and freeze ended the growing seas from the Mid-Atlantic State northward. The Black Frost as it become known ushered in a terrible winter of famine.

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Hurricane Jeanne comes ashore near Hutchinson Island just to the east of Stuart, Florida on September 26, 2004 as a Category 3 storm. The storm passed over Polk County, Florida. Winds at Fort Pierce Inlet gusted to 126 mph, and gusts to 104 mph were recorded at Vero Beach. 1 million people without power. Many houses had been blown off of their foundations. The centers of Charley, Frances, and finally on September 26, Jeanne all passed over Polk County in the 2004 Hurricane season. This is the first time since 1950 that the entire eye of two Category 3 hurricanes impacted Florida in the same year. Many people became unnerved by having all 3 hurricanes hit the same place and 2 of them so powerful and this led to a decline in the population in that region for the next several years as people simply moved away from the hurricane prone area.

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