This Date in Weather History

1980:   1980 brought the United States one of the worst heat waves in its history. The intense heat and drought that wreaked havoc on much of the Midwestern states and 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 almost $65 billion in 2020 dollars. It is among the billion-dollar weather disasters listed by the US government. The heat wave began in June when a strong high-pressure area began to build in the central and southern United States allowing temperatures to soar to 90 degrees almost every day from June to September. The high-pressure system also acted as a cap on the atmosphere, stopping the development of thunderstorms, leading to exceptionally severe drought conditions. The heat wave broke only when the decaying Hurricane Allen disrupted the weather pattern. In some areas the spring got a jump start on what was to come. On April 22, 1980. The mercury reached 100 degrees in Waterloo, Iowa the highest temperature ever recorded in the state of Iowa in the month of April.

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1963: Dust devils, are small, brief whirlwinds occurring most frequently in the early afternoon when a land surface is heating rapidly. Dust devils are occasionally made visible by the lofting of dust, leaves, or other loose matter from the ground. Dust devils form when a pocket of hot air near the ground rises quickly through cooler air above it, forming an updraft. If conditions are just right, the updraft may begin to rotate. As the air rapidly rises, the column of hot air is stretched vertically, which causes intensification of the spinning effect. Most dust devils are usually small and weak, often less than 3 feet in diameter with strongest winds averaging about 45 miles per hour, and they often dissipate less than a minute after forming. On rare occasions, a dust devil can grow very large and intense, sometimes reaching a diameter of up to 300 feet with winds in excess of 60 mph and can last for upwards of 20 minutes before dissipating. Dust devils typically do not cause injuries, but rare, severe dust devils have caused damage they typically occur in dry, arid areas with the most common being Arizona, New Mexico, Eastern California. But on April 21 1963, the combination of prolonged dry weather along the eastern seaboard and strong southerly wind transport hot weather from the southern United states resulted in a dust devil in Reading, Pennsylvania. The giant dust devil up to half a mile high, tore bricks from the side of a school, uprooted trees and downed power lines. 

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1982:  Strong temperature contrasts and violent weather outcomes in the springtime in the United States are generally unique in the world. Vast flatlands that start as in the great coastal areas of Texas and Louisiana gently roll northwest from there into the Great Plains on the central United States and extend up into Canada. Weather systems can traverse the region unencumbered by mountains or large bodies of water. In the spring cold air is still left over from the departing winter, lurking in northwest Canada in the Yukon. Meanwhile heat from the coming summer is building across Mexico and even Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. When strong winds in the high atmosphere pick up speed and start to bend in great wave patterns and the heat is drawn northward and cold southward in a great dance and battle between the competing seasons. The result of this clash often manifests itself in wild and extreme weather. On April 20, 1982 such a setup became established. In the warm sector violent thunderstorms erupted. At Richland in central Mississippi, strong thunderstorm winds blew over trailers. In Central Texas, baseball sized hail fell at Burnett and hail the size of grapefruits pounded Cedar Park. As much as 4" of rain fell over northern Louisiana and northeast Texas, and flooding occurred around Nacogdoches, TX. A tornado touched down at Lake Travis to the west of Austin, TX. Tornadoes were sighted around Lake Charles, LA near and near Moss Bluff. Meanwhile in the cold sector Northwestern Wisconsin was covered by more than a foot of snow. Weyerhaeuser, WI received 16”, with 15” at Barron

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1775: In the early morning hours of April 19, 1775, Paul Revere was making a mad dash through Middlesex County just west of Boston. He was trying to avoid British patrols but was stopped by one briefly before making his getaway, the roads were soft and muddy from the heavy rains of the previous day and he was able to elude his captors. It was not last time the weather would play a part in that fateful day. Revere galloped from town to town, from farm to farm to warn that the British regulars were coming to seize the stores of powder and shot local militias had been hiding to defend themselves from British tyranny. Rouse them he did. As the author Rick Atkinson states in his book “The British Are Coming”. Across the colony, in an image that would endure for centuries, solemn men grabbed their firelocks and stalked off in search of danger” The British left Boston and rowed across the Harbor to Charlestown and started the march to Lexington. There in Lexington, they encountered a band of local militia and when the patriots assembled refused orders to disperse the British fired. The colonials were routed. The British then marched on to Concord, where thousands had gathered, warned by Revere and other riders. The British found themselves out gunned and outflanked. The first pitched battle of the revolution turned into the colonial victory. The British had planned to bring about their small cannon with them to teach the rebels a lesson. That ordnance would have come in handy that day. But the roads were still soft and muddy on April 19, 1775. Even though the sun was out it was cold and the sun was little help to dry the roads, it was a chilly Spring day because a cold front had brought that rain the day before. The canons got stuck in the mud on the road from Boston and had to be left behind. The battle perhaps turned on the muddy road and the rainy weather from the day before.

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LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.    5

He said to his friend, ‘If the British march

By land or sea from the town to-night,

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch

Of the North Church tower as a signal light,—

One, if by land, and two, if by sea;    10

And I on the opposite shore will be,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every Middlesex village and farm,

For the country folk to be up and to arm.’

 Then he said, ‘Good-night!’ and with muffled oar    15

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,

Those are the opening lines of immortal poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride”, by Henry Wadsworth LongfellowRevere’s task was to ride through the countryside and call out the country-folk to arms to resist British tyranny. As the poem said, Revere was across Boston Harbor in Charlestown to watch the steeple of the old north church in Boston to see if the British were going to march out of Boston on land or take boats across the harbor and through Charlestown. It would warn the local militia’s which route the British would take. If one lantern was hung then over land, but two would signal the water and across the harbor. Most of April 18, 1775 was cloudy and rainy in Boston, the visibility was not good. Revere wouldn’t be able to see “Old North” as it was known. But late in the evening a cold front moved across the region, and by the time of the signal, skies were clear. Revere saw the two lanterns clearly across on the opposite shore and rode into history.

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1821: Boston, Massachusetts averages just under 2” of snow for the month of April. Given is proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and the warming effects of the water, big snowstorms in April are uncommon – but not rare. On April 17, 1821 such an uncommon event occurred as a strong storm system slowly lumbered up the eastern seaboard. Cold air held sway over New England, the storm swung northward but was far enough out to sea to prevent the warming effects of a flow of air off the ocean. The big counter-clockwise swirl of winds around the system blew from the north northeast and off the land enforcing cold air from eastern Canada rather than an east flow off the warmer ocean. The result was a foot of snow and the snowstorm prevent the Legislature from opening for several days. The storm also brought 3” of snow in New York City and 16” to Worcester, Massachusetts. Interestingly the 12” of snow in Boston is not the most snow there from a single storm in April, that record belongs to April 1, 1997 when more than 25” blanketed Beantown.

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1851: On April 16th, 1851, a strong nor'easter smashed into Cape Cod, and brought the highest waters ever seen in that area up to that the time, easily besting the high tides of 1723. The system went into the history books as "The Lighthouse Storm. Heavy gales and high seas pounded the coasts of New Hampshire and eastern Massachusetts. The storm arrived at the time of a full moon, and the high tide was already well above what would be termed normal for the coast. That evening, the newly-constructed Minot's Ledge Lighthouse was destroyed by this massive storm. The storm weakened the tower's iron support piles, causing them to collapse and topple into the ocean off the coast. The lighthouse keeper, had been away in Boston when the storm struck. Onlookers on April 17 could only see the bent iron pilings where the lighthouse once stood. The two assistant lighthouse keepers, kept the lighthouse lamp burning as late as 10:00 PM on the night of April 16th to warn ships of the nearby rocks just before they were swept away in the storm’s massive waves. 

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1912: 1912 was a year of promise. The start of World War I was still two years away and science and technology were ascendant with the outlook that humans had conquered nature and their inventions could overcome anything. Albert Einstein had already been working on his theories around relativity that would revolutionize Physics. In practical terms, the first decade to the 20th century saw the invention of the vacuum cleaner , the air conditioner and the electric washing machine. It seemed like science was triumphant. It was with attitude that British White Star Line commissioned the building of the largest ship ever constructed. The Titanic. The ship would have every technological advantage and be unsinkable. It left the British Isles at Queenstown, Ireland, on Thursday, April 11, 1912 on its maiden voyage. The weather awaiting the Titanic in North America was cold. In Boston, a few thousand fans shivered in the cold and snow flurries as the Red Sox beat Harvard University 2-0 in the first game ever played at Fenway Park. On April 12, the winds were west-southwest at about 20 mph and the noon temperature was about 60 degrees where the ship was on the Atlantic Ocean. As the ship continued west, the skies got cloudier as a weak cold front approached. The noontime temperature on Saturday, April 12, was still at 60 degrees, but another cold front (associated with the previous Fenway flurries) was to the west and north of the ship. As the Titanic passed through the second cold front on Sunday, April 14, the winds switched to northwest at 25 mph. The noon temperature was 50 degrees, but by 7:30 p.m., the temperature had dropped to 39. On Sunday, nighttime temperatures dropped below freezing, and the skies cleared and the winds calmed. A large Arctic air mass was now over the area on the clear, star-lit night with subfreezing temperatures and calm winds that resulted in a sea “like glass.” Icebergs were known to be in the region, but the calm winds made spotting them difficult. To spot icebergs during the night, lookouts searched for wind-driven waves breaking around their bases, but because of the calm weather this effect did not occur. The ship struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. Sunday, April 14. While the seas were relatively calm, that NW flow of air behind the front end actually steered a giant ice field towards the ship that night. The ship hit the iceberg that has been estimated as possibly weighing up to 300,000 tons, and the ship’s hull was torn open. It then took less than three hours from that point on for the Titanic to sink. The temperature of the water was estimated to be as low as 28 degrees – even lower than the conventional 32-degree freezing point as salt helped to lower its freezing point. Even though many people went into the water and survived the initial crash and sinking, the extremely cold-water temperature caused almost all in the water to suffer hypothermia and die quickly. Just hours before the wind has been west and the coldest water had not been pushed around the great ship. The water temperature may have been as high as 50 which would have allowed people to survive much longer in the water. At 2:20am on April 15, 1912 the Titanic slipped below the water. The unimaginable had happened, the unsinkable ship went to the deep. Faith in the promise of technology and science was shaken. 

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1986: The National Weather Service reports that Hail is a form of precipitation consisting of solid ice that forms inside thunderstorm updrafts. Hail can damage aircraft, homes and cars, and can be deadly to livestock and people. Hailstones are formed when raindrops are carried upward by thunderstorm updrafts into extremely cold areas of the atmosphere and freeze. Hailstones then grow by colliding with liquid water drops that freeze onto the hailstone’s surface. Hail falls when it becomes heavy enough to overcome the strength of the thunderstorm updraft and is pulled toward the earth by gravity. Although Florida has the most thunderstorms, Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming usually have the most hailstorms. The area where these three states meet – “hail alley” – averages seven to nine hail days per year. Other parts of the world that have damaging hailstorms include China, Russia, India, Bangladesh and northern Italy. The largest hailstone recovered in the United States fell in Vivian, South Dakota, with a weight of 1 lb. 15 oz. But the world’s heaviest hailstorm fell on April 14, 1986 in the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh. It likely fell to the ground at 90 mph and it weighed 2.25 lbs. 

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1981: The New York Times reports that chatting on the telephone connected to a land-line during a thunderstorm can electrocute you, it is no urban legend. A bolt of lightning that strikes a telephone line can cause an electrical surge to shoot through the wires and enter a handset. The odds of this are relatively small, and most phone companies have protective measures in place. Still, the risk exists, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recommends that people avoid using telephones and other appliances during electrical storms. Cases of customers' being jolted while on the phone in a storm are well documented. In fact, on April 13, 1981 a person was killed while talking on the phone in Kincaid, IL when lightning struck an outside telephone line and traveled to the house via a phone line; the phone exploded. What about cell phones? Because the danger comes from lightning traveling through outdoor wiring, cordless and cellular phones are generally safe.

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