On the Eve of our first potential winter event of 2019/20, a tale of winters past.. present, and future

*Article updated to include blizzard of 2002 information after a reader rightfully pointed out that it was forgotten.*

The season has changed.. suddenly, and without an invite, the fierce cold winds of winter are making an early debut in the United States.

“The National Weather Service is forecasting 170 potential daily record cold high temperatures Monday to Wednesday,” Weather Channel meteorologist Jonathan Erdman said in a tweet. “A little taste of January in November.”

For much of the country east of the Rockies, the cold wave could mean temperatures of up to 30 degrees below average, according to CNN meteorologist Taylor Ward. All of this before Thanksgiving!

“We are in a pattern where multiple waves of cold are moving in from Canada and impacting the Central and Eastern US,” he said.

We are also getting ready for our first chance of real snow and ice in this area.. At the time this is written, the forecast calls for a chance of rain changing to ice and snow for portions of the area..

Along with cold will inevitably come chances of snow.. ice.. misery. YES it is all on tap for our foreseeable future..

Some of our ancestors who remain present on the planet earth will attest to much worse winters of the past, however.. They will say they had to ‘jump to spat’ at times when they were kids, that the snow was up to the necks and they were still forced to trudge through it to school houses on a secluded country road!

Maybe much of this is hyperbole, but we can look to past headlines to gauge the patterns that once were.. and maybe learn from then to capture a glimpse of life in the patterns of the future..

Moving back greatly in time, there were moments when fierce weather systems caused misery and destruction in the dead of winter.. David Ludlum was reported to be a collector of weather history by the Washington POST in 2011.. Among the storms he wrote about:

January 27-28, 1772: The Washington-Jefferson Storm, since they both talked about it in their diaries
Christmas 1776: Our history books teach us that Washington crossed the Delaware that stormy Christmas night and successfully stormed the British at Trenton. This storm is said to have dumped about 2 feet of snow from central Virginia to central Maryland, probably including the DC area, but that is unclear.
December 23, 1839: 2 feet of snow fell in Baltimore..
January 18, 1857: Sub zero temps with feet of snow in the Northeast..

March 11, 1888 was unseasonably mild. Just after midnight on the 12th, things changed. A massive Nor’Easter began to swirl, and the great Blizzard of 1888 began.. Railway and telegraph lines were disabled, and this provided the impetus to move these pieces of infrastructure underground. Emergency services were also affected.. Parts of Jersey had 40 inches of snow.. Further north, there were reports of 50 inches with even higher snow drifts.. All life ground to a sudden halt.

1922 saw the onset of the roaring 20s.. and boy did winter roar that year. The Knickerbocker storm was a blizzard that occurred on January 27–28, 1922 in the upper South and middle Atlantic United States. The storm took its name from the resulting collapse of the Knickerbocker Theatre in Washington, D.C. shortly after 9 p.m. on January 28 which killed 98 people and injured 133!

People were killed while laughing at a comedy show..

The North East had a “Great American cold Wave” hit in 1936.. February 1936 was the coldest February on record in the contiguous U.S., narrowly eclipsing February 1899.. up to 100 people died in 36’s wave due to highway accidents from snow and ice..

The December 1960 nor’easter was a significant early-season winter storm that impacted the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions of the United States. Moderate to heavy snowfall fell from West Virginia to eastern Maine, amounting to 10 in (25 cm) or more in parts of 13 states and peaking at 21.4 in (54.4 cm) at Newark, New Jersey. The storm was accompanied by strong winds, gusting to over 90 mph (145 km/h) in coastal New England, and left in its wake a dangerously cold air mass. The storm originated in a weak low pressure area which formed over the western Gulf of Mexico on December 10. A secondary low developed over South Carolina on the next day, supported by the merger of two troughs aloft. Sliding southeast of New England, the new storm explosively deepened to become a full-fledged nor’easter, with a minimum central air pressure of 966 mbar. It began to weaken over the Canadian Maritimes.

Back in 2010, when the United States was experiencing a cold winter situation, Live Science reported that the climate of the time may have reminded some of their childhood in the 1970s! At that time in January 2010, snow covered a vast majority of the United States of America..

A massive 1977 Blizzard hit New York and Ontario with 50 foot drifts and arctic cold..

X X X

On the afternoon and evening of March 2, 1980, North Carolina experienced a major winter storm with heavy snow across the entire state and near blizzard conditions in the eastern part of the state. Widespread snowfall totals of 12 to 18 inches were observed over Eastern North Carolina, with localized amounts ranging up to 22 inches at Morehead City and 25 inches at Elizabeth City, with unofficial reports of up to 30 inches at Emerald Isle and Cherry Point (Figure 1). This was one of the great snowstorms in Eastern North Carolina history. What made this storm so remarkable was the combination of snow, high winds, and very cold temperatures.

The famed STORM OF THE CENTURY struck in 1993 when I was just 12 years old.. This is the first time I can say with certainly and concreteness that I lived through a monumental storm of epic proportion.. I recall forecasters almost nervous on the Weather Channel and local TV.. I can remember school

being canceled for over a week, and then the snow itself not melting for weeks into the spring of that year..

The 1993 Storm of the Century was a large cyclonic storm that formed over the Gulf of Mexico on March 12, 1993. The storm was unique and notable for its intensity, massive size, and wide-reaching effects; at its height, the storm stretched from Canada to Honduras. The cyclone moved through the Gulf of Mexico and then through the eastern United States before moving on to Canada. The storm eventually dissipated in the North Atlantic Ocean on March 15, 1993.

Heavy snow was first reported in highland areas as far south as Alabama and northern Georgia, with Union County, Georgia reporting up to 35 inches of snow in the north Georgia mountains. Birmingham, Alabama, reported a rare 13 inches of snow. The Florida Panhandle reported up to 4 inches of snow, with hurricane-force wind gusts and record low barometric pressures. Between Louisiana and Cuba, the hurricane-force winds produced high storm surges across the big bend of Florida which, in combination with scattered tornadoes, killed dozens of people.

Record cold temperatures were seen across portions of the south and east of the US in the wake of this storm. In the United States, the storm was responsible for the loss of electric power to more than 10 million households. An estimated 40 percent of the country’s population experienced the effects of the storm with a total of 208 fatalities.

Three years later, Mother Nature was not done creating history.

The Blizzard of 1996 was a severe nor’easter that paralyzed the United States East Coast with up to 4 feet of wind-driven snow from January 6 to January 8, 1996. This storm was a classic example of a nor’easter, but the storm would not have been as historically significant without the presence of the arctic high pressure system located to the north of New York. It was followed by another storm, an Alberta Clipper, on January 12, then unusually warm weather and torrential rain which caused rapid melting and river flooding.

At the age of 15, I remember this storm creating havoc and 20 foot mountains of plowed snow on roadways.. and then flooding rains, all within a few days.

After the great storms of the mid 90s, we didn’t have much. I recall the next few winters almost being minus anything of note concerning winter weather. We seemingly hibernated into a period of warmth.. Early pollen seasons, and the Cherry Blossoms blooming early in Washington DC..

Until the 21st century..

First there was a monumental Christmas Day blizzard in 2002 when virtually all holiday travel and family dinners became frozen to a halt .. https://wnep.com/2012/12/26/the-christmas-blizzard-of-2002/

It was potentially one of my worst Christmas memories because everything good about Christmas didn’t happen. Tons of families with grand ham and seafood dinners left in the cold with no one at the table!

The Blizzard of 2003, also known as the Presidents’ Day Storm II or simply PDII, was a historical and record-breaking snowstorm on the East Coast of the United States and Canada, which lasted from February 14 to February 19, 2003.

Just one month later in 2003, another massive storm hit on ST. Patrick’s Day:

In 2007, a major ice storm crippled Pennsylvania on Valentine’s Day.. two feet of snow in some places.. and interstate traffic brought to a half for over 2 days in other places..