This Date in Weather History

After a sweltering heat wave held the Eastern United States in its grip for Bi-Centennial celebrations in early July of 1976 a strong frontal system approached the region on July 7th. Severe thunderstorms developed and ripped across the New York City area. Two tornadoes tore through the heavily populated area of northern New Jersey, skirting the Statue of Liberty where days before tens of thousands of people had gathered for July 4th and near 11 tall ships still at anchor for the Bi-Centennial celebration. One of the tornadoes lasted nearly 8 minutes before it dissolved back into a thunderstorm. Only 3 people were injured, but property damage ranged from over turned tractor-trailers to torn roofs, and entire walls ripped away from buildings. Another funnel cloud was reported near Coney Island.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Village of Potter, Nebraska was established as the railroad progressed westward. In 1870, Union Pacific built a station house and it served as the post office, the schoolhouse and the land development office. It was the only building build for several years. Potter has grown slowly over the last 150 years with less than 400 residents in 2020. Nature.com reports that a remarkable hailstorm occurred on July 6, 1928 in Potter during which hailstones “as large as grapefruit” fell, one of which measured 17 inches in circumference and weighed 1½ pounds. The stones could be heard hissing through the air, and when they fell on ploughed or soft ground they completely buried themselves. Luckily the hailstorm just missed the town itself – impacting fields and grazing land. Very little damage was done by these stones beyond the unroofing of a few houses, as they fell 10–15 feet apart. For many years, the largest hailstone officially verified in the United States was that "Potter Hailstone" .The Potter record stood until September 3, 1970, when a hailstorm of astounding proportions ravaged Coffeyville, Kansas. Hailstones smashed small craters in the soil of plowed farm fields outside Coffeyville and left lawns in town pitted and gouged, and the town itself was a shambles. But a new hail record emerged: the "Coffeyville Hailstone" weighed in at 1.67 pounds with a circumference of 17.5 inches.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

New Jersey.com reports that The Standard Oil refinery fire, at Constable Hook in Bayonne, began during a thunderstorm at 12:30 a.m. on July 5, 1900. Lightning reportedly struck the Bay View tavern and boarding house, sending flames to the nearby oil fields and setting off explosions in three storage tanks, each having a capacity of 40,000 barrels of oil. High-reaching flames and dark smoke soared to the sky with a 20-mile range of visibility. Firefighting materials and water had been under stress due to the fact that the leading up to the fire had featured 90-degree temperatures, sweltering humidity, and shifting winds that had started on July 4th. Within minutes after the fire began, the company siren sounded, bringing its own fire department and tugboats into action. Their strategy was to contain the fire, allowing the spillover of heated oil from the storage tanks to burn off. As firemen directed their hoses to cool the burning tanks with streams of water, employees at pumping stations siphoned off the oil into empty storage tanks. The tugboats moved the company ships and oil-filled barges away from its burning docks to safe waters. The placement of log "booms," forming a floating barrier, to protect New York Bay and the digging of trenches to receive the flowing burning oil were among the other tactics used to stem the fire. Bayonne's entire volunteer fire department joined in the exhausting effort with re-enforcements from Jersey City and Staten Island. Despite the constant intense heat, thousands of spectators flocked to the hazardous site arriving by foot, bicycles, crowded cars, trolleys and ferries. Finally, after 70 hours, on July 7 at 10:30 p.m., the fire burned out. It left behind a reported 19 injured and costs amounting to $2.5 million.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Declaration of Independence was formally adopted by the Continental Congees on July 4th 1776 in Philadelphia. It was a relatively pleasant summer day in Philadelphia. The normal high temperature is 87, but observations recorded that day showed no temperature above 76. We can primary thank Thomas Jefferson for the weather report of the day, in addition to his other duties of helping to write the Declaration and work for its adoption of the 4th. According to the website Monticello.org, Thomas Jefferson liked to take at least two weather observations per day. One would happen around sunrise, so he could log the low temperature of the day, and another was between 3 and 4 p.m. when the high temperature usually occurred. He would also list remarks like cloud cover, precipitation and whether or not it was humid. According to the American Museum of Natural History, Jefferson recorded in his weather journal for July 4, 1776, that he woke up to find that the temperature at 6 a.m. was 68 degrees. At 9 a.m., the temperature was up to 72 degrees, and at 1 p.m. it was 76 degrees. When Jefferson arrived in Philadelphia he was unhappy with the thermometer he brought with him from Virginia and the story goes that he purchased a new one in the early days of July 1776. The weather recorded leading up the July 4th, had been hot and humid with temperatures well up in the 80s, but the cooler weather prevailed on the 4th.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Considered one of the turning points of the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg is said to be the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil. Fought in Gettysburg, Pa., July 1 through 3 in 1863, historians put the number of causalities and missing Union and Confederate soldiers at 46,286. Bayonets, rifled muskets, cannons and infections all contributed to the carnage. AccuWeather.com reports that the weather, however, created causalities as well. A Gettysburg man, Dr. Michael Jacobs, a math professor at what was then called Pennsylvania College, had a strong interest in weather and recorded his observations three times a day, every day, even during the battle. Ben Neely, Executive Director at the Adams County, Pennsylvania Historical Society, emphasized that the most damaging aspect of the weather actually occurred July 4, the day after the battle. Rain fell across the area for most of the day, Rev. Dr. Jacobs put the total at more than an inch. While wounded still lay on the field, some may have felt welcomed by the break in action. Some wounded soldiers had still not been moved from low-lying areas by the Plum Run Creek, however, which overflowed its banks. The wounded soldiers who were near the flood waters, reportedly all Confederate, drowned. According to Civil War historian and retired AccuWeather team member, Dr. Lee Rainey, an even larger issue that was faced as a result of the rain was the retreat attempts made by the Confederate Army on July 4. "They had to move a 17-mile long train of wagons filled with wounded soldiers over the dissolving dirt roads back to Virginia, " he said. "And the rains caused the Potomac River - easily fordable on the march north - to flow so high that the army was trapped on the north side with the Union forces in pursuit. The Confederates dug in for a desperate battle, but in the end were able to escape across the river on the 13th, the day before Meade's planned attack." The days leading up to that point were not without tragedy as fighting consumed the fields of the Pennsylvania town. For its part, the weather was more cooperative at the battle's start. July 1, the first day fighting began, had a sky covered by puffy white clouds all day. The breeze was southerly at only 2 mph; the afternoon temperature was a comfortable 76 degrees. The second day started with similar cloud cover, but clouds increased by the afternoon, when temperatures went up to 81. Likewise, the cloud cover started the third day, July 3rd and cleared considerably by the afternoon. The clouds that remained, however, was the "massive thunder-cloud of summer." A thunderstorm started around 6 p.m. EDT. "The thunder seemed tame, after the artillery firing of the afternoon," Rev. Dr. Jacobs wrote.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The 1980 United States heat wave was a period of intense heat and drought that wreaked havoc on much of the Midwestern United States and the Southern Plains throughout the summer of 1980. It is among the most devastating natural disasters in terms of deaths and destruction in U.S. history, claiming at least 1,700 lives and because of the massive drought, agricultural damage reached $20 billion or more than $60 billion in 2021 dollars. The Heat Wave got started in the end of June 1980 and by July 2nd was in full swing. In Wichita Falls, Texas the temperatures reached 114 degrees, breaking old record by an incredible 10 degrees. It was the 9th consecutive day of 100 degrees plus. Many other cities in Texas reached or exceeded 100 degrees every day for more than a week. In fact, in Dallas a new record high was set for the month of July at 110 degrees. July 2, 1980 marked the 10th consecutive day of record high temperatures in Dallas.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Heavy rains in eastern North Dakota and northwest Minnesota on July 1, 1975 caused disastrous flooding of the Red River of the North. The river crested 16' above flood stage at Fargo. It was the worst flooding in North Dakota history and caused $1 billion property damage or almost $5 billion in 2021 dollars, bridges washed out and transportation through much of the region became impossible. A local newspaper reported that "Much of the farmland is one big ocean with white caps on farm fields under 2-3 feet of water." In Lisbon, North Dakota a tree fell over, but not from any wind, the soil was so soaked; it couldn't support a tree. Most farmers were unable to get into their fields for month and the wheat and other grain crops were a total loss for that year causing prices of commodities in the United States and around the world to rise aiding in the inflation that would plague much of the world for the next 5 years.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the month of June 2009 went into the record books on June 30, Los Angles reported that temperatures remained below normal every day in June, both at the airport and downtown; the first and only time that ever happened. The cool weather was a result of almost constant flow of air off the Pacific Ocean. At the airport, the warmest high temperature on any day in June 2009 was 71; this is the first time that temperatures ever failed to rise above 75 in June. The hottest June temperature ever recorded at the airport, that sits right on the Pacific coast, is 104 degrees. In Downtown Los Angeles the average daily high temperature is about 75°, the hottest temperature ever recorded was on June 26, 1990, when residents and visitors suffered through a sweltering 112-degree day.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hurricane Alice was the second-strongest Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in the month of June since reliable records began in the 1850s. While not a major hurricane, the storm was linked to catastrophic flooding in southern Texas and northern Mexico, especially along the Rio Grande and its tributaries. The third tropical cyclone and first hurricane of the 1954 Atlantic hurricane season, Alice was one of two storms to receive the same name that year, the other being an unusual Hurricane that formed in the Caribbean in December 1954 and persisted into the new year of 1955, becoming one of only two January hurricanes on record. The first Alice developed rather suddenly on June 24 off the coast of Mexico, though it may well have formed earlier but went undetected due to limited observation before the age of weather satellites. Moving northwestward, Alice strengthened rapidly as it neared the Mexican coastline, becoming a hurricane early the next day. By midday on June 25, the hurricane reached peak winds of 110 mph before moving inland well south of the U.S.–Mexico border. The storm struck an area with few inhabitants and caused relatively minimal impacts from wind near the point of landfall and in southern Texas. As it moved inland, however, Alice produced heavy rain along and near the Rio Grande, resulting in some of the worst flooding ever seen in parts of northern Mexico and southern Texas; in some areas, the flooding amounted to a one-in-1,000-year event. The floods destroyed bridges and dikes and flooded many cities along the inner reaches of the river, which reached its highest water levels since 1865. Communities in Mexico reported significant flood damage. In the United States, damage was heaviest in Ozona, Texas, where on June 29 1954, the floods killed 15 people. In all, flooding from Hurricane Alice killed at least 55 people, including 17 in the U.S. and 38 in Mexico, though many deaths in rural Mexico may have gone unreported; the total death toll could have exceeded 150.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gay Americans have long faced a system rigged against them by both cultural and legal means. With very few places traditionally to gather in the 1950s and 60s, many from the LGBTQ community gravitated to night clubs and bars where their sexual orientations were at sometimes celebrated or at least accepted. Still even in these places, those present were more times than not subject to discrimination, harassment and even violence by those nearby. This often occurred at the hands of the police who were ordered to invade these places and make a certain number of arrests and close down the establishments. In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, the patrons of that bar had had enough of the long-term systematic abuse and marginalization. When the police attempted to enter the bar those there resisted. The Stonewall uprising became more pronounced when reports circulated that early morning that the police became violent in those attacks on the LGBTQ community. Crowds gathered and came to the aid of those at Stonewall. Tensions between the New York City police, and gay residents of Greenwich Village erupted into more protests the next evening and again several nights later. Within weeks, Village residents quickly organized into activist groups to concentrate efforts on establishing places for gay men and lesbians to be open about their sexual orientation without fear of being arrested. It marked the beginning of the Pride movement. Today, LGBTQ Pride events are held annually throughout the world toward the end of June to mark the Stonewall uprising. In June 2019, the 50th anniversary of Stonewall more than 5 million people participated in the celebrations in New York Coty alone, and on June 6, 2019, New York City Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill rendered a formal apology on behalf of the New York Police Department for the actions of its officers at Stonewall in 1969. June 27, 1969, had been a scorching hot and humid day in New York City with a high temperature of 96 and in the early morning hours of June 28 the mercury was still in the 80s. The Stonewall Inn, like many Gay bars of the time were run down and not well maintained, it was poorly air-conditioned, and some patrons were outside the bar trying to cool off. This helped lead to the first wave of resistance outside the bar. Would the initial resistance have occurred if the was not so steamy that night, perhaps not – but the just fight for LGBTQ rights would undoubtably broken through at another time and place as the expansion of human rights continues to move forward.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.