This Date in Weather History

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 to date causing $1 billion property damage or almost $5 billion in 2020 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 field for month and the wheat and other grain crops were a total loss for that year causing prices of commodities in the United State and around the world to rise aiding in the inflation that would plague much of the world for the next 5 years.

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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 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.

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June 29. 1954: 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. 

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June 28, 1778: The Battle of Monmouth Court House, the current modern-day Freehold Township New Jersey, was fought on June 28, 1778, during the American Revolution. The Continental Army, commanded by George Washington fought against the British commanded by General Sir henry Clinton. The Continentals had spent the previous winter in Valley Forge rebuilding the army as Washington defended his position against political enemies who favored his replacement as commander-in-chief. In February 1778, an alliance with the French had tilted the strategic balance in favor of the Americans, forcing the British to abandon hopes of a military victory and adopt a defensive strategy. Clinton was ordered to evacuate Philadelphia and consolidate his army. The Continental Army shadowed the British as they marched hard across New Jersey to Sandy Hook, from where the Royal Navy would ferry them to New York. Washington's senior officers urged varying degrees of caution, but it was politically important for him not to allow the British to withdraw unscathed. Washington detached around a third of his army under General Lee and sent it to attack, hoping to land a heavy blow on the British without becoming embroiled in a major engagement. The battle began badly for the Americans when Lee botched an attack on the British rearguard at Monmouth Court House. A counter-attack by the main British column forced Lee to retreat until Washington arrived with the main body. Clinton disengaged when he found Washington in an unassailable defensive position and resumed the march to Sandy Hook. The battle was tactically inconclusive and strategically irrelevant; neither side landed the blow they hoped to on the other, Washington's army remained an effective force in the field and the British escaped to New York. The Continental Army inflicted more casualties than it suffered, and it was one of the rare occasions on which it retained possession of a battlefield. It had proven itself to be much improved after the training it underwent over the winter, and the professional conduct of the American troops during the battle was widely noted by the British. Because of the American success and that of Washington his position as commander-in-chief became unassailable. The fact that Washington was able to fight the British successfully and they had to yield the field was due in no small part to the awful early summertime heat on June 28, 1778. High humidity hung in the air and the temperature topped 100 degrees. The British had been marching for several days and Clintons troops were exhausted and had to yield in the fact of the Americans and the heat, as there were estimates that the British lost more men to heat stroke than battle wounds. The hot weather may have turned the tide of battle and saved Washington’s position as commander of Continental forces and thereby also saved the Revolution.

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June 26, 1957: Hurricane Audrey’s latest movements were fresh on the minds of families in Cameron, Louisiana, before bedtime on June 26, 1957, according to AccuWeater.com. Broadcasters that evening announced that the storm, that had strengthened into a Hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico the day before, would make landfall over the Texas and Louisiana border late the next day. In a time before satellites, meteorologists relied on aircraft reconnaissance, ship reports and minimal radar to monitor the storm’s whereabouts. The United States Weather Bureau’s 10 p.m. report placed Audrey 235 miles south of Lake Charles, a Louisiana town 52 miles inland. The advisory warned that those living in low exposed areas should move to higher ground as the storm crept northward toward the coast at 10 mph. Assuming that they had ample time to escape Audrey’s impact, Cameron residents had packed their vehicles in preparation for an early morning evacuation. In its final six hours before landfall, a strong flow in the Jetstream suddenly dropped southward and helped the intensifying hurricane rapidly accelerate as it barreled toward the southern U.S. and by 1am its winds had increased to ore than 150 mph. By that time, however, broadcasters had gone off the air and residents were fast asleep. Audrey came ashore and pounded the southern U.S. coast and destroyed coastal communities with intense winds and flooding. People woke up around 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning with 6 feet of water coming into their houses. About 1,000 people made it safely into Cameron’s three-story courthouse. However, those unable to escape the powerful hurricane drowned in Gulf waters pushed inland by an unexpected storm surge of at least 12 feet. Audrey, was the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the month of June, and killed at least 500 people and caused an estimated $150 million in damage in the U.S. It was the 7th deadliest hurricane in modern history. The storm’s impact and intense storm surge were felt 25 miles inland, many of the victims were never found.

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June 26. 2007: In June 2007 the Great European heat wave impacted most of Southern Europe. The extreme heat began affecting Italy and Turkey on June 17 and expanded into Greece and the Balkans along with Hungary and Ukraine on June 18. Up until June 21, temperatures generally topped out between 97–102 in most of the region; however, starting on June 22, temperatures wratched up even higher in the entire region. During the 3-day period from June 23 to June 25, temperatures soared to 109–111 . By June 26, 2007, Greece seemed to bear the brunt of the heatwave with temperatures in Athens reaching 115. The same day, Greece's national power consumption set a new record. Parts of Greece, including neighborhoods in Athens, suffered from power outages due to high electricity demand and heat damage to the grid. Explosions from overheating transmission towers were implicated in forest fires that started to rage across the country. There was no relief either in the night of June 26 when the mercury failed to drop below 90. More than 200 people were hospitalized for heat-related treatment and 18 people died from heat exhaustion. By June 28 northerly winds started blowing and temperatures finally began falling, but still managed to reach 102. The damage was done by the Heat Wave that climaxed on June 26 and by the time the temperatures finally started to lower more than100 fires were burning across the country. 

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June 25, 1966: As early as 1946, the idea of cameras in orbit high above the Earth to observe the weather was being developed. One advantage this would bring was due to sparse data observation coverage and the expense of using cloud cameras on rockets. By 1958, the early prototypes for TIROS and Vanguard, developed by the Army Signal Corps, were created. The first weather strictly satellite, Vanguard 2, was launched on February 17, 1959. It was designed to measure cloud cover and resistance, but a poor axis of rotation and its elliptical orbit kept it from collecting much of any useful data. The first weather satellite to be considered a success launched by any nation in the world, was TIROS-1, or Television Infrared Observation Satellite, launched by NASA on April 1, 1960. TIROS operated for 78 days and proved to be much more successful than Vanguard 2. TIROS paved the way for the Nimbus program, whose technology and findings are the heritage of most of the Earth-observing satellites NASA and NOAA have launched since then. Beginning with the Nimbus 3 satellite in 1969, temperature information through the entire atmosphere began to be retrieved by satellites from the eastern Atlantic and most of the Pacific Ocean, which led to significant improvements in weather forecasting. Weather satellites collect data for climate, and environmental monitoring applications including precipitation, sea surface temperatures, atmospheric temperature and humidity, sea ice extent, forest fires, volcanic eruptions, global vegetation analysis, hurricane information and cloud cover. The United States was the only country the have a weather satellite in space until June 25, 1966 when the Soviet Union launched its first. As of 2020 there are more than a dozen weather satellites in orbit around the Earth, operated by several different counties who all share the weather information.

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June 24, 1991: Violent thunderstorms racked across the northern plains state on the evening of June 24 1991. Hot humid conditions had held sway across a vast part of the nation’s midsection during the middle of June, while chilly air built up over Alaska and the Yukon. On June 23 that cold air was unleashed southward by a strong current in the Jetstream. As it pushed into the early summertime heat thunderstorms began to grow. By June 24, 1991 aided by moisture streaming northward from the Gulf of Mexico heavy thunderstorms erupted across the Dakotas as the cold air mass cut into the region. The warm steamy air holding near the grounds surface was enough to supply plenty of moisture – but the cold air moving in high in the atmosphere was enough to cause large hail to form and in the town of Scranton, North Dakota 3.5” of rain in 28 minutes along with 1.5-foot drifts of marble sized hail. Front-end loaders were needed to clear the streets. 

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June 23. 1586: Attempts by European’s to settle in North America were spotty in the 1500’s. Most groups large enough to establish a permanent base did not really take hold until the 1580s and later. Most of those that arrived where men in search of fortune and adventure, often times at the expense and persecution of the Native American inhabitants. It wasn’t until the 1600’s that waves of European’s came to escape mainly religious persecution and in a striking twist of irony they also built their settlements exhibiting some of the same behaviors they were escaping from Europe. One of the earliest colonies set up was on Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. First settled in 1585 by Ralph Lane it was re-supplied by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1586. Raleigh stayed for some weeks, but as he was set to return to England a powerful Hurricane hit on June 23. The storm wrecked most of the colony and it had to be abandoned and those surviving evacuated back to England. The following year another group of settlers arrived in the same spot. They were dropped off and the ships returned to England. No contact was maintained with the colony and 3 years later when a supply ship arrived no trace was found of the second colony. Some thought hard times caused those there to abandon the site or simply perish. Some believed the 1586 hurricane that destroyed the infrastructure left no base for the new colony to build on. It would another 2 decades before the English would establish a permanent site on the Mid-Atlantic coast in Jamestown Virginia.

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June 22, 1972: The AccuWeather.com archives report that almost 50 years ago in 1972 of one of the first billion-dollar hurricanes in the history of the United States struck. A mass of clouds over the Yucatan grew more organized on June 14, 1972. What would soon become a hurricane of minimal strength in terms of wind and storm surge would soon lead to, according to President Nixon, "The greatest natural disaster in the history of the United States." Nixon made the statement after viewing the damage in Agnes' wake firsthand. Agnes occurred only a few years after billion-dollar hurricanes Betsy in 1965 and Camille in 1969. Damage from Agnes would not be exceeded by a hurricane in the U.S. until 20 years later. After making landfall on the Florida Panhandle on June 19 as a minimal hurricane, Agnes weakened to a tropical depression over the southeastern U.S. However, the storm was able to survive and strengthen to a tropical storm once again by moving off the mid-Atlantic coast. A non-tropical weather system soon captured Agnes and caused the storm to loop northwestward over Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. The topography, tropical moisture and energy resulted in up to 19 inches of rain and massive flooding spanning centered on June 22 1973, following an already wet spring for the region. The Susquehanna River, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay, bore the brunt of Agnes' rainfall. The amount of fresh water flowing into the bay during a several-day period, on the order of trillions of gallons, negatively affected local marine life and the seafood industry for several years. Record flooding swept much of the east. Total damage from Agnes was over $3.0 billion in the U.S. Adjusted to today's dollars, this would be well over $20 billion. Agnes also caused extensive damage to railroad lines in the region, already taxed by bankruptcy. While the Agnes disaster has been eclipsed by more powerful and costlier storms during recent decades, including hurricanes Andrew and Katrina, it still ranks in the top 10 costliest hurricanes in the U.S., adjusted to today's dollars. The name Agnes has been retired from the list of Atlantic hurricanes, by the World Meteorological Organization.

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