This Date in Weather History

1925 was extremely dry across the southeastern part of the nation. In fact, the summer of 1925 was the driest on record in Alabama. The drought would only be equaled in some places by the Dust bowl days of the 1930. The atmosphere heats up when the sun heats the ground and then the ground radiates or transfers the heat created by the sun back into the low atmosphere, heating the air. Normally some of the sun’s energy is used not to heat the ground but rather to evaporate any moisture in the soil. Since the ground was dry and dusty all that happened was that the ground baked away. The stage was set for the greatest September heatwave in Alabama history. Many cities would see their highest temperatures ever that September. That included Centreville, which set the state's all-time high temperature record at 112° F on Sept. 5, 1925. An incredible feat for the month of September. No other state has an all-time record high temperature set in September, most are in July or early August. By September the length of daylight is shortening and it’s harder for the sun to do it’s work – but not that exceptional year. In fact, on September 5, 1925 every reporting station in Alabama had a high temperature above 100°, a feat that has never been repeated. All across the state daily high temperatures set records. 

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Tropical storm Norma formed off the west coast of Mexico just after the page of the calendar turned to September in 1970. By September 3rd it had reached minimal tropical storm force then was pulled inland after moving briefly up through the gulf of California. Its impacts were minimal in Mexico and many though the worst was over. It lost its circulation, but not it’s moisture. Heavy tropical moisture deep through the atmosphere came streaming northward into Arizona. The result was what is known as The Great Labor Day Storm of 1970.Severe flooding hit Arizona on September 4, 1970 that extended into the 5th. This storm dropped the most rain ever along the Mogollon Rim, near Payson, stretching from Workman Creek to Parker Creek to Crown King. The most rainfall in 24 hours reported in one range gauge outside of Globe was 11.92 inches.. Phoenix received 2.43 inches and Scottsdale 4 inches from the storm. Many were out and bout that Labor Day weekend at one of the many campgrounds in the area. Never before in the state’s recorded history had it rained so hard or so much in one day and never before had so many mountain streams and normally dry washes risen so rapidly or filled so fast with raging torrents of water. All-time previous high-water marks were exceeded. 23 lives were lost making it the greatest natural disaster in the history of the state. All who lost their lives were away from home and all but 4 were in automobiles. 14 died attempting to flee campgrounds in the headwaters of the Tonto Creek.

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The strongest Hurricane of the 1935 Atlantic hurricane season formed from a slow-moving, weak disturbance east of the Bahamas on or around August 28, 1935. On 31 August, the U.S. Weather Bureau issued its first storm advisory. The report indicated that a tropical system of small size but noteworthy strength existed about 60 miles east of Long Island, Bahamas. The depression encountered the Great Bahama Bank later that day where warm, shallow waters combined with the storm’s slow movement, allowed it to intensify quickly. Early on 1 September, the depression reached hurricane status and continued to strengthen as it made its way through the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. On September 2, 1935, the hurricane reached its greatest intensity and made landfall later that night as a Category 5 storm, crossing the Florida Keys between Key West and Miami, FL. As it made landfall, it was packing sustained winds of 185 mph. After passing the Keys, the hurricane slowly recurved northward and closely paralleled Florida’s west coast. The then weakened hurricane made a second landfall as a Category 2 storm near Cedar Key, FL on the afternoon of 4 September. The hurricane quickly weakened as it moved inland across Georgia and the Carolinas on 5 September. By the morning of September 6, the center of storm passed again into the Atlantic near Norfolk, Virginia. It quickly regained hurricane strength and continued northeast until it became non-tropical south of Greenland on 10 September. Practically all losses from the hurricane were suffered in Florida, with most occurring in the Florida Keys. According to hurricancescience.org: “A swath of destruction 40 mi wide occurred across the Keys. Most structures were destroyed by the hurricane’s Category 5 winds, which gusted at times to over 200 mph, and the complete inundation of the islands by a 20 ft storm surge. On Metacumbe Key, every single building and tree was destroyed. The tracks of the Florida East Coast Railroad, the main transportation route linking the Keys to mainland Florida, were shifted off their roadbed and completely destroyed. The tracks were never rebuilt, as the railway now terminates in Miami. Fatalities throughout the Keys were significant. At least 409 people perished. Initial predictions of the storm indicated the storm would pass through the Florida Straight and into the Gulf of Mexico. When it was discovered these predictions were incorrect, as the storm was moving much slower than forecasted, the forecast was modified to predict an impact on Cuba. The true path of the storm was realized too late to allow sufficient amount of time for evacuation, and because of this late warning, many people did not leave the Keys. Among those who did not evacuate were World War I veterans working on a project to connect the railway to the Keys, 259 of whom perished.”

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According to the website, The Revolutionary War and beyond, “On, September 2, 1775, the Independence Hurricane hit the American colonies as the American Revolution was beginning. It would be the 8th deadliest Atlantic hurricane of all time. After dumping rain for a week, the hurricane landed in North Carolina and continued up the coast through Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. The storm was particularly devastating to the region's economy because it was harvest season. Many crops were still in the field and were completely destroyed. In addition, the Continental Congress had enacted a ban on trade with Britain to take effect on September 10th. This meant a flurry of activity was taking place in every east coast port, as merchants and farmers tried to get out one last shipment before the trade ban went into effect. Ships and warehouses were overflowing with tobacco, corn, salt, sugar and other goods. North Carolina suffered the worst effects of the Independence Hurricane, so named because it took place at the start of the War of Independence. The Outer Banks were destroyed and entire settlements swept away. Coastal cities were flooded, crops destroyed and many ships and their crews were lost. It is believed that over 200 people died in North Carolina alone. As the storm continued to rage across the Chesapeake, towns such as Norfolk, Hampton and Yorktown had their ports destroyed. Warehouses full of goods were blown away. Ships were deposited on shore. The roof of the State House in Annapolis was blown away.”

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Yuma, Arizona is noted for its weather extremes. Of any populated place in the contiguous United States, Yuma is the driest, the sunniest, and the least humid, has the lowest frequency of precipitation, and has the highest number of days per year—175—with a daily maximum temperature of 90. Yuma features a hot desert climate, with extremely hot summers and warm winters. Atmospheric humidity is usually very low except during what are called Gulf Surges, ", when a maritime tropical air mass from the Gulf of California is drawn northward, usually in connection with the summer monsoon or wet period or the passage of a tropical storm to the south. The sun is said to shine during about 90% of the daylight hours, making Yuma one of the sunniest places in the world. The city receives the most recorded average sunshine of anywhere on Earth. The area's first settlers for thousands of years were Native American cultures and historic tribes. In 1540, Spanish colonial expeditions under visited the area and immediately recognized the natural crossing of the Colorado River as an ideal spot for a city. But it wasn’t until the 1860s that the city gradually grew. Slow growth were the watchwords until the advent of air conditioning because of its hot climate. On September 1, 1950 the temperature in Yuma reached 123 degrees – the highest temperature ever recorded in the United states in the month of September.

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During the summer of 1772 a young 17-year-old clerk was toiling in the West Indies on the Island of St. Croix. He had been born in poverty, but even at his young age had risen to be given responsibilities of management at the firm he clerked for. On August 31, 1772 as a powerful hurricane roared through the region. The clerk wrote a letter describing the storm that said in part: “It’s impossible for me to describe, or you to form any idea of it. It seemed as if a total dissolution of nature was taking place. The roaring of the sea and wind, fiery meteors flying about it in the air, the prodigious glare of almost perpetual lightning, the crash of the falling houses, and the ear-piercing shrieks of the distressed, were sufficient to strike astonishment into Angels. A great part of the buildings throughout the Island are levelled to the ground, almost all the rest very much shattered; several persons killed and numbers utterly ruined; whole families running about the streets, unknowing where to find a place of shelter; the sick exposed to the keenness of water and air without a bed to lie upon, or a dry covering to their bodies; and our harbors entirely bare. In a word, misery, in all its most hideous shapes, spread over the whole face of the country.” Once the letter was published in the British Colonies of North America the businessmen of St. Croix were so moved by account of the tragedy that they demanded to know who wrote the letter and took up a collection to send him to America to be educated. This was incredible given the state of the island, which was ravaged by the storm and wouldn’t recover for years. Sometime in late 1772 or early 1773, the clerk boarded a ship to the Colonies, never to return to the West Indies. That clerk was Alexander Hamilton. He would enter Columbia University in New York and then, at the start of the Revolution, become an officer in the Continental army. He helped turn the tide in the battle of Trenton, was on the general staff of Washington and led the final assault on Yorktown that all but ended the Revolutionary War. He was one of the authors of the Federalist papers that helped turn opinion to adopt the Constitution and then served as the first Secretary of the Treasury producing a brilliant plan to stabilize the new American Currency and thus set the nation on firm financial footing. Recognized as one the founding fathers Alexander Hamilton may never have come to the Colonies had it not been for the hurricane that struck St. Croix and his description of it from August 31, 1772 and who knows was impact that might have had on the future of the United States.

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This Date in Weather History is often filled with stories of Hurricanes this time of the year. These monster storms all across the globe leave a trail a destruction and despair. They can change history and the fate of millions. Almost every storm’s impacts are a result of heavy rain, powerful wind and pounding rampaging sea and surf. On August 28, 1839, such a storm struck Charleston South Carolina with strong force to flood the streets and nearby farms. It moved quickly up the coast dumping more heavy rain in North Carolina and there are reports of some damage in Norfolk, Va. The system then headed northeast and off the coast. It was still powerful enough to sink a floating lighthouse off the coast of New Jersey. On Sunday August 30 as the storm headed for the open waters south of Cape Cod a surge of unseasonably cold air blasted out of eastern Canada and into New York state. Across the Catskill mountains temperatures plunged to near freezing, yet moisture was still being hurled inland. The result was one of those rare occurrences across the uplands of eastern New York – a snow hurricane. Several inches of the white stuff mounted up – the wind was still howling and the heavy wet snow plastered itself to everything in what could be describe as a hurricane white-out.

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Hurricane Katrina was a large Category 5 Atlantic Hurricane that caused more than 1,200 deaths and $125 billion in damage in August 2005, particularly hard hit was the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time, the costliest tropical cyclone on record, and is now tied with 2017's Hurricane Harvey. The storm was the third major hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, and the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in the lower 48 states. Katrina began to develop on August 23, 2005 as a tropical depression. Early the following day, the depression intensified into a tropical storm as it headed generally westward toward Florida, strengthening into a hurricane two hours before making landfall at Hallandale Beach on August 25. After briefly weakening to tropical storm strength over southern Florida, Katrina emerged into the Gulf of Mexico on August 26 and began to rapidly intensify. The storm strengthened into a Category 5 hurricane over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It made landfall over southeast Louisiana and Mississippi on August 29. There is controversy to this day as to the strength of the storm when it came ashore. The National Hurricane Center determined that the system weakened as it crossed the coastline to a Catagory 3, yet evidence and surveys after the storm and the complete and utter destruction lead some to suggest that it was still a Cat 5.  Flooding, caused largely as a result of fatal engineering flaws in the flood protection system known as levees around the city of New Orleans, caused the greatest loss of life. Eventually, 80% of the city, as well as large tracts of neighboring parishes were under water for weeks. The flooding also destroyed most of New Orleans' transportation and communication facilities, leaving tens of thousands of people who had not evacuated the city prior to landfall stranded with little access to food, shelter or basic necessities. Many of those left behind were people of color and others in working class neighborhoods. The scale of the disaster in New Orleans provoked massive national and international response efforts; federal, local and private rescue operations evacuated displaced persons out of the city over the following weeks, but to many the response was too slow. Multiple investigations in the aftermath of the storm concluded that the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, that had designed and built the region's levees decades earlier, was responsible for the failure of the flood-control systems. The emergency response from federal, state and local governments was widely criticized, resulting in the resignations of FEMA director Michael Brown. Many government officials were criticized for their responses, especially the New Orleans Mayor and the Louisiana Governor, and President George W. Bush. The congressional elections the following year brought about a 31-seat swing from the GOP to the Democrats and control of the U. S. House of Representatives to the Dems. As a result of the Democratic victory, Nancy Pelosi, became the first woman and the first Californian elected House Speaker the change of control in the House was attributed by many, in part, to the inadequate response to Katrina the year before.

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The 1990 Plainfield tornado was a devastating tornado that occurred on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 28, 1990. The violent tornado killed 29 people and injured 353. It is the only F5 tornado ever recorded in August and the only F5 tornado to strike the Chicago area. Between 3:15 p.m. and 3:45 p.m. CDT on August 28th, 1990, a violent F5 tornado ripped through Kendall and Will counties. The tornado left a 16.4 miles-long damage which ranged from 600 yards to a half a mile in width. An estimated total of $160 million dollars in damages was added up with a total of 470 homes destroyed and 1000 damaged. Before the Enhanced Fujita Scale was put in use in 2007, the tornado damage was assessed by using the Fujita Scale. On the Fujita Scale, an F5 tornado has estimated wind speeds of 261-318 mph and is defined as having incredible damage in which strong frame houses can be leveled and swept off of foundations, automobile-sized objects can be lifted up into the air, and trees are usually debarked. The Plainfield tornado was the first ever tornado greater than an F3 rating, since records began in 1950, to occur during the month of August in the state of Illinois. It was the second killer tornado since 1950 to occur during the month of August in Illinois. 31 years later this tornado remains the only F5/EF5 rated tornado documented in the United States during the month of August. The tornado had low clouds and rain surrounding it, making it difficult to see. Because of this, no known photographs or videos of this tornado exist. The tornado approached from the northwest; most tornadoes approach from the southwest. Because of these factors and others there was little or no warning. Wikipedia reports that: “In the months following the tornado, the National Weather Service was heavily criticized for providing no warning of the approaching tornado. The NOAA Disaster Survey Report was highly critical of the forecast process within the Chicago office as well as coordination with local spotter networks and the preparedness of these groups. Prior to 1990, the National Weather Service in Chicago was responsible for providing forecasts for the entire state of Illinois. As the Chicago office was overwhelmed with its workload, no warnings were issued by the office until 2:32 p.m. – nearly an hour after the first tornado was sighted southeast of Rockford. A second severe thunderstorm warning was issued almost an hour later at 3:23 p.m., but this provided no indication that a tornado was on the ground and did not mention the area where the tornado had tracked. No tornado warning was issued until after the tornado lifted.”

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On August 27, 1893, a major hurricane which came to be known as the Sea Island Hurricane struck the United States near Savanah, Georgia. It was one of three deadly hurricanes during the 1893 Atlantic Hurricane Season; the storm killed an estimated 1,000–2,000 people, mostly from storm surge. .On August 15, 1893, a tropical storm formed off the west coast of Africa. It became a hurricane on the 19th, while crossing the Atlantic. The hurricane continued to strengthen, attaining Category 3 status on August 22 while located northeast of the Lesser Antilles. By the evening of the 25th, the storm was approaching the Bahamas. It is believed that the first effects of the storm were beginning to be felt in the Sea Islands area off the Georgia coast, with the winds steadily increasing during the night of the 25th.  Landfall occurred near Savanah, Georgia, on August 27. Reports from the time say that wind during landfall was around 120 mph, making it a category 3 storm. Pressure in Savannah was measured at 28.00” modern estimates put the pressure as low as 27.50” out at sea. This would have made the hurricane most likely stronger than a Category 3 storm. The hurricane carried with it a heavy storm surge of at least 16 feet, although the modern hurricane models calculates that some areas may have been inundated up to 30 feet that caused great destruction along the coastline and offshore. An estimated 1,000 to 2,000 people were killed mostly by drowning, putting it on-par with 2005’s Hurricane Katrina as the sixth-deadliest hurricane in US history. St. Helena was estimated to have 6,000 African-Americans living there with the majority owning their own land and homes in a time when most Black people were prevented from doing so. Most structures in that area were not elevated higher than 2 feet; therefore, they were covered by the first waves that went above the normal water mark. Although the hurricane was devastating, the American Red Cross did not arrive until October 1, possibly because of ongoing efforts following another hurricane that hit South Carolina in June. Others claimed it was neglect because most of those impacted where Black Americans. Damage was reported as far north as Maine. Damage was heavy all along the New Jersey coast and breakers were described as the biggest ever witnessed. Railroad tracks were under four feet of water. Crops were heavily damaged in Pennsylvania and upstate New York. At Coney Island, roofs were lifted off big buildings and carried for blocks. Waves topped the seawall by 15 feet at Battery Park. Damage was heavy at resorts on Long Island and it was the worst storm on the New England coast in 20 years.

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