This Date in Weather History

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2009: Twelve people were hospitalized Saturday May 2, 2009 after the roof of the Dallas Cowboys' indoor practice facility in Frisco, Texas collapsed during a thunderstorm. The giant blue star atop the building lay crumpled on the ground. The storm knocked out power at team headquarters and splintered trees across the property. The roof was a large air- and tension-supported canopy with aluminum frames covering a regulation 100-yard football field. Approximately 70 players, coaches, staff and media were reported inside. Some of the injuries were serious, authorities said, but none were considered life-threatening. Based on the national standards for determining loads and for designing structural steel buildings, the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology researchers studying the Cowboys facility found that the May 2 wind load demands on the building's framework—a series of identical, rib-like steel frames supporting a tensioned fabric covering—were greater than the capacity of the frame to resist those loads. The researchers determined that, at the time of collapse, the wind was blowing predominantly from west to east, perpendicular to the long side of the building. Maximum wind speed gusts at the time of collapse were estimated to be in the range of 55 to 65 miles per hour—well below the design wind speed of 90 miles per hour in the national standard for wind loads. The NIST report recommended building owners, operators and designers inspect all fabric-covered, steel-frame structures, evaluating them to ensure they are designed to handle appropriate wind loads. 

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1854: The winter of 1853-1854 had been a particularly snowy one across the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire. Not record breaking, but it was a cold winter and the snows that fell during the winter months didn’t melt much. The cold lingered into April and so did the snow on the ground. The weather pattern broke as the month ended, winds in the high atmosphere turned from the northwest to out of the south and ushered in warm air that had been building across the Gulf states in the early spring. At the same time copious volumes of moisture were carried along in the current of air from the Gulf of Mexico and the result was an unceasing rain that developed all across New England. Along with a soaking rain and soaring temperatures cloudbursts imbedded in thunderstorms brought hour after hour of rain. By the time the rain ended on May 1, 1854 it had been raining for 90 consecutive hours. Rainfall totaled more than 5” in Worcester, Mass and more than 7 ½ inches in Southwick, Mass, a general 3-5” rainfall fell from Philadelphia all the way to Maine. The rain coupled with the warm snow melting temperatures produced record flooding all across New England. The greatest crest on the Connecticut River was at Hartford where the river reached almost 29’ above flood stage.

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1887: The Huang He or Yellow River is one of the longest rivers in China, at 3,398 mi, it loops northward from the mountains in western China, then flows east, each year bringing 1.6 billion tons of fine-grained silt from the mountains to the huge flat basin of the north China plains. That rich laden dirt and silt makes the region one of the most fertile in the world, it is China’s breadbasket. The silt nourishes and replenishes the land. The Yellow River gets its name from its rich, fine-ground, golden mud. Unfortunately for the farmers, the only way the river can spread its fertilization is by flooding the fields; and the Yellow River has flooded a recorded 1,593 times in four thousand years, with catastrophic effects. The worst flooding occurred in 1887. For decades leading up to 1887 dikes and embankments had been built along the river to control its flooding and provide irrigation for crops. In some places, because of those levees, the river was flowing more than 20 feet higher than the surrounding countryside – a breech in the system was all that was needed for disaster. An usually snowy winter and a wet mild spring led to massive snowmelt in the mountains and heavy rains contributed more water. On April 30, 1887 the first of several massive floods erupted as the river could no longer be contained. Flooding continued off and on all summer. The flooding led to the greatest weather disaster in human history. More than 900,000 perished in the initial rounds of flooding close to the river with another estimated 1.3 million drowned from flooding away from the river as the floodwaters spread out all across northern China. A further estimated three to four million died from flood-related, waterborne diseases, with a thick deposit of muddy silt 8 ft deep, the most fertile fields in China were a desert which had to be cleared by bare hands and wheelbarrows.

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1991: On April 22, 1991 an area of tropical thunderstorms began to organize in the Bay of Bengal it would grow to become one of the deadliest tropical cyclones ever recorded. The storm hit, one of the most populated areas in Bangladesh. An estimated 200,000 people were killed by the storm, as many as 10 million people lost their homes, and overall property damage was in the billions of dollars. One the weather system organized it began moving north. By April 24 the storm was designated Tropical Storm 02B, and by April 28 it was a tropical cyclone, or as they are known in the western hemisphere, a hurricane. One day later on April 29 the storm hit, with winds of up to 150 miles per hour. The damage was immediate, as a storm surge as high as 15 feet)engulfed the flat, coastal plans of southeastern Bangladesh. The surge washed away entire villages and swamped farms, destroying crops and spreading fears of widespread hunger as well as economic woes. As a result of a 1970 storm, a few storm shelters had been built. Though in 1991 some were saved by the shelters, many people had doubted warnings of the storm. Since the 1991 storm, the Bangladesh government has built thousands of elevated shelters in coastal areas. 

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1992: A hailstone begins as a water droplet that is swept up by an updraft inside of a thundercloud. Inside the cloud, there are a large number of other supercooled water droplets already present. These supercooled particles will adhere to the water droplet’s surface, forming layers of ice around it. The size the hailstone reaches depends on the amount of time it spends surrounded by supercooled water droplets, but eventually gravity causes the stone to fall to the Earth. As gravity takes over, they will fall to Earth at approximately 106 miles per hour. The exact velocity each stone falls at will vary depending on several conditions, such as weight, air friction and collisions with other suspended objects. The evening of April 28, 1992, brought with it one of the most devastating hailstorms of all time, pummeling two areas approximately 100 miles apart. For nearly five hours, residents between Waco to Fort Worth braced as hailstones the size of grapefruits 4.5 in. diameter smashed windows and decimated roofs. The worst damage was reported across Ellis, Dallas, and Tarrant counties. More than 600 pets and wild animals were killed. Damage was estimated at $750Million or almost $1.5Billion in 2020 dollars.

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2004: Santa Ana Winds occur when air from an area of high pressure over the dry, desert region of the southwestern U.S. flows westward in its clockwise circulation towards the California coast. This creates dry winds that flow east to west through the mountain passages in Southern California. These winds are most common during the cooler months of the year, occurring from September through May. Santa Ana winds typically feel warm or even hot because as the cool desert air moves down the side of the mountain, it is compressed, which causes the temperature of the air to rise at the rate of more than 5 degrees for every thousand feet in descends. These strong winds can cause major property damage. They also increase wildfire risk because of the dryness of the winds and the speed at which they can spread a flame across the landscape. The winds can produce uncommon heat. On April 27, 2004 a strong Santa Ana developed causing temperatures to soar all across Southern Calif smashing record by more than 10 degrees in some places. Ontario, near Los Angles reach 100 degrees breaking the old record of 90, Riverside reached 101, the mercury at the beaches reached closed to 90.

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1986: The Chernobyl, Russia nuclear disaster was the worst nuclear disaster in history and occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor Plant. A catastrophic eruption ripped through the power plant on April 26, 1986, spewing radioactive particles into the sky. The deadly blast was caused by the explosion of the RBMK reactor 4, a result of human error and equipment faults. More than 50,000 people from the nearby town of Pripyat were evacuated following the blast. But plumes of deadly radioactive matter were sent high into the atmosphere as the uranium core lay exposed in the days that followed. The particles were swept across Europe by winds. Officials in Sweden 683 miles away were alerted of radiation levels within their atmosphere within 48 hours of the explosion. Soviet authorities initially denied the claims anything happened but were forced to reveal the mistake as the scale of the accident unfolded. The initial impacted areas were Ukraine, Belarus and West Russia, with some areas contaminated indefinitely and are still wastelands. The World Nuclear Association said: “Most of the released material was deposited close by as dust and debris, but the lighter material was carried by wind over Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and to some extent over Scandinavia and Europe. ”The weather was a big factor as rains and snow were responsible for bringing radiation down to the ground, where it would penetrate into the Earth. The World Health Organization says an estimated 7,722 square miles of land in Europe was affected by radiation.

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1993: Most lightning strikes occur from cloud to cloud – but about 20% go from clouds to the ground. Lightning striking the ground has caused problems with pipes and water supplies.. Some people have also experienced cloudy or discolored water after a lightning storm. Due to the strike, the vibration into the earth can shake the well causing any built-up minerals to fall into the water supply. When lightning strikes near a home or other structure, sending electricity shooting through the ground, the electricity, which prefers to flow through metal rather than dirt, seeks out any buried copper pipes or the home's ground rod. Building codes require the metal grounding rod to be connected to a home's wiring and pipes. Electricity moves through the pipes until it hits a dead end, such as when the copper pipe meets a plastic service line or some other nonmetallic fitting. Lightning has also coursed through the ground and impacted tree roots and pipes close to those roots. On April 25, 1982 in Lexington, AL, Lightning struck a tree, then reached through its roots to a PVC pipe holding drinking water. Almost 50% of the town’s water supply was lost before the pipe could be repaired. 

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1993: A large tornado slammed into a section of I-44 east of Tulsa during the early evening hours of April 24 1993. The Washington Post reported that the storm blew cars and trucks off the interstate highway and damaged dozens of homes this evening, killing at least 10 people, injuring at least 50 and leaving hundreds homeless. "This was not a storm that stayed down and then went back up. It stayed down for several minutes and totaled the area," said Jerry Griffin, an inspector for the Tulsa County Sheriff's Department. That area was about a mile wide and two miles long, he said. At least 80 mobile homes were demolished at a trailer park in a Tulsa suburb. Two major truck stops on Interstate 44 were scattered piles of rubble. Sheets of metal were wrapped around whatever poles were left standing. Families who escaped from their vehicles at one truck stop walked around dazed, clinging to pillows, blankets and other possessions.

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2013: April 23, 2013 was more than a month deep into the Spring, but Old Man winter wasn’t quite done with depositing a new round of cold weather into the Great Plains. The weather during the middle of April of the mid-section of America had been mild, field work had already gotten underway. But far to the north across the arctic lands of Canada cold weather had been building for more than week. At the start of the third week of April it was unleashed southward, bringing a cold wave more typical of mid-winter. All across Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota the mercury plunged into the single digits. Reaching down to 1 above at Big Sky Montana, 8 at Huron SD and 9 in Lander Wyoming. In Wichita, Kansas 0.2” of snow fell. This marked the latest measurable snowfall on record. The old record for the latest measurable snow was set almost 100 years earlier on April 20, 1918. 

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