Spring had arrived two weeks earlier, the 1982 baseball season had begun the day before and Easter was less than a week away. Yet here it was April 6 and we were under a blizzard warning, the first ever issued for New York in April. Rain began overnight, changed over to wet snow by a.m. rush hour and then the blizzard's full fury set in from 10AM-4PM. Most offices closed at noon, and the Mets and Yankees cancelled their season openers. I stayed at the office (ad agency Young & Rubicam) because I lived in Manhattan and getting home wasn't an issue.
That evening when I emerged from the PATH station in my Greenwich Village neighborhood I turned the corner onto my street and was amazed by the drifts I had to trudge through to get home. However, despite the snow the bowling league I participated in at Bowlmor Lanes still met.
Although Central Park had 9.6" of snow many suburbs reported a foot or more (Albany had 17.3"). It was NYC's biggest snowfall in four years. By midnight the temperature had fallen to a record 21 degrees.
The next day not much in the way of snow melt occurred as the temperature stayed below freezing all day - as opposed to a typical high in early April approaching 60 degrees. (By contrast, on the same date 28 years later NYC reported its earliest 90-degree reading.) Three days later I flew home to visit my parents in Pittsburgh for Easter and it was snowing there (two inches fell). Thankfully, this wasn't a precursor of an unusually cold April as a string of mild days occurred mid-month and then on April 25 the mercury hit 82 degrees.
If you love reading about snow, I've written five other posts about New York snowstorms:
And if you'd like to read about other New York City snowstorms, I've written a post on my weather blog, NYC Weather Archive, that recaps the snowstorms we've experienced since the winter of 1978/79. To go to it please click here.
On February 26, 1993 New York, and the nation, was shaken by the terrorist bombing in a parking garage at the World Trade Center. Two weeks later Mother Nature was preparing her own assault as a monster storm swept up the East Coast. I didn't pay much attention to news of the impending storm until the night before it hit, a Friday. After work I had gone out with friends to Splash, a sprawling new gay bar in Chelsea. Once home I turned on the Weather Channel to hear about the approaching "white hurricane". (And the first day of Spring was just one week away).
The storm's full fury hit NYC Saturday morning (March 13) and continued thru mid-afternoon. (This photo, near my apartment in Greenwich Village, was taken at around noontime.) However, after ten inches of snow had fallen a changeover to sleet and rain began in the late afternoon, keeping the accumulation down. I was outside when the changeover began and the sleet pellets really stung because they were being propelled horizontally by 40-60 mph wind gusts. The noise the sleet created as it lashed against the windows in my apartment was deafening. I was concerned that my floor to ceiling living room window might blow in so I pulled down the blind.
Happily, I suffered no window damage, but after the storm subsided (at around midnight) that's when my problems started. Hearing a dripping sound I looked up and saw that the ceiling in one corner of my living room was cracking and buckling. It turned out that the snow on the roof (I lived on the top floor) had piled up high enough to cover a drain pipe, so melting snow had nowhere to go and collected in one spot.
I was thankful to be home so I could move my sofa and TV out of harm's way. However, I couldn't get in touch with my building super so I had to make due with a collection of pots and pans to collect the dripping water. However, the steady "ping" of the dripping made sleep nearly impossible. The next morning I got up early and found the super shoveling snow. He was unable to go up on the roof and clear the blockage because snow was drifted against the door so he brought up two large trash bins to my apartment to collect the water which pored out when he poked a few holes in my ceiling.
Compared to other parts of the Eastern U.S. New York was spared paralyzing amounts of snow (a nearby street in my neighborhood is pictured). Elsewhere, however, there were record accumulations not only in the Northeast (Pittsburgh had 26", Syracuse 36") but in the South as well, e.g., Atlanta had 9"; Birmingham 13"; Chattanooga 23". Even Mobile, Alabama on the Gulf Coast reported three inches of snow! The Weather Channel would later rank the storm, which affected nearly half of the U.S. population and left more than 250 dead, as one of the top five weather events of the entire 20th century.
If you'd like to read about other New York City snowstorms I've written a post on my weather blog, NYC Weather Archive, that recaps the snowstorms we've experienced since the winter of 1978/79. To go to it please click here. And on this blog I've written post on four other famous NYC snowstorms:
Despite a cold start the winter of 2005-06 had turned into a relatively mild one. In fact, during a 7-week period beginning just after Christmas temperatures averaged nearly 10 degrees above average - and January was the thirdrd mildest on record. So it was somewhat of a shock when a major snowstorm came calling.
The first flakes began falling Saturday evening just as I was leaving a movie in the Lower East Side. (Steven Soderbergh's indie film Bubble). By midnight about three inches had fallen. The snow continued until mid-afternoon Sunday, but the bulk of it fell in a 6-hour period between 5-11AM when an incredible 18 inches fell (a ski resort-like snowfall rate of three inches/hour). The storm's total was 26.9", breaking the old record from December 26-27, 1947 by one-half inch. Since NYC was in the "bullseye" no other locality received nearly this much. At around noon on Sunday I ventured out with my camera and spent an hour or so in Washington Square Park snapping photos.
Interestingly, although the blizzards of January 1996 and the post-Christmas blizzard of 2010 dumped seven inches less than this 2006 storm, the City seemed more crippled by them. And to me this record snow seemed no deeper than those storms. It could very well be that the accumulation in my Greenwich Village neighborhood, about three miles south of Central Park, was different.
This would be the only snowfall of February. It ended up accounting for two-thirds of the winter's total snowfall.
If you'd like to read about other New York City snowstorms, I've written a post on my weather blog, NYC Weather Archive, that recaps the snowstorms we've experienced since the winter of 1978/79. To go to it please click here.
I was 11 years old at the time and living in Pittsburgh - and greatly annoyed that we got hardly a snowflake from this snowstorm. Meteorology was a new interest of mine and I didn't yet understand the dynamics of weather systems, e.g. East Coast storms often don't affect Western Pennsylvania because the Appalachian Mountains act as a barrier. (As was the case with the post-Christmas blizzard in 2010.) The 15.3" that fell on New York beginning Sunday, February 9, 1969 brought the city to a virtual standstill for a number of days. It was front page news in the Pittsburgh papers, and I eyed the photos enviously. (Like the one to the right showing mostly foot traffic on 2nd Ave. near 45th St.)
It became known as the "Lindsay snowstorm" because New York's mayor John Lindsay (pictured, left) was blamed for not getting streets plowed quickly enough, especially in the boro of Queens. It nearly cost him re-election later that year, but he won running as an independent. (10 years later a series of crippling snowstorms in Chicago was largely responsible for the defeat of its mayor.) At the time it was the City's tenth biggest snowstorm - since then eight subsequent storms have had larger accumulations.
This snowstorm was the inspiration for two episodes of the sitcom That Girl (starring Marlo Thomas). In a two-part storyline Ann and boyfriend Donald were stranded at JFK by the snowstorm after accompanying her parents to the airport. This threatened a Broadway audition Ann had later that day - which she eventually did over the phone. Later, Donald, a writer for the fictional Newsview Magazine, wrote a story about Ann's experience. These episodes aired on ABC on October 30 and November 6, 1969. (They are from the show's fourth season which is available on Amazon.)
Perhaps helped by a weekend snowstorm and a cold wave over the Midwest and Northeast, Super Bowl XVI between the San Francisco 49ers and Cincinnati Bengals has the distinction of being the highest rated Super Bowl of them all. The game, which SF won 26-21, posted a 49.1 household rating/73 share. It still ranks as the 4th highest rated telecast of all time (behind the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983, the "Who Shot J.R?" episode of Dallas in 1980 and the final episode of "Roots" in 1977). There have been Super Bowls with larger audiences (due to population increase) but no game has pulled a higher rating.
I didn't see the big game. That weekend found me in Connecticut visiting my boyfriend Rick who lived in Middletown (the following year he'd move into Manhattan with me). That Sunday afternoon we drove up to the hamlet of Norfolk in snowy Litchfield County (in the northwestern corner of the state) to visit his friends Debbie and Mort (a burly forest ranger). We had a brief delay on the drive there when our car was hit by a pile of snow and ice that crashed down upon us from a snowplow working on a highway overpass. And later that evening my trip back to Manhattan would be delayed because Rick's car became stuck in the driveway, frozen in place.
(Although no books/DVDs for this particular game are available the newly published book The Ultimate Super Bowl Book offers stats & stories about all 43 match-ups while the DVD NFL Films Super Bowl Collection XI-XX recaps highlights of the games played between 1977-1986.)
Some newsworthy events unfold over a course of weeks so they can't be pin downed to one moment in time. Such was the case of the unrelenting cold and snow of January 1994 and a number of high-profile criminal cases that received considerable attention in the same month.
For much of the nation it was one of the coldest and snowiest Januarys on record. New York was hit by a lot of sleet and freezing rain; a number of sub-zero mornings caused ice to form on the Hudson and East Rivers (which I could see from my office at ad agency NWAyer on the 34th floor of Worldwide Plaza on West 50th St.), making for slow going for river traffic. In the middle of the month I tried to escape the brutal cold by flying down to Orlando where I made my first visit to Disney World and Epcot. Unfortunately the Arctic chill followed me (the same misfortune befell me two years later when I took a vaction in Key West in February).
Before the introduction of the "reality" TV format, there was Court TV (now called truTV). During this frigid and inclement month I got into the habit of watching it because of its "gavel to gavel" coverage of a number of headline grabbing cases. First was the trial of Lorena Bobbitt who cut off her husband's penis while he slept and then tossed it out of her car window. Less salacious, but equally riveting, was the trial of the Menendez brothers, Lyle and Eric, for the murder of their wealthy parents. (Even more attention was generated due to the brothers' flamboyant attorney, Leslie Abramson.) Then feisty figure skater Tonya Harding was added to the mix when she was implicated in the pipe bashing of her rival Nancy Kerrigan a few days before the U.S. Figure Skating Championships and one month before the Winter Olympics. (Besides Court TV these cases received exhaustive coverage from CNN, Nightline and the Big 3's evening news shows.)
These cases also made celebs of legal analysts Jeffrey Toobin and Star "before The View" Jones (who knew she had a law degree?). I suppose these tawdry cases were a welcome diversion from that winter's onslaught. Of course, this was all just a prelude to the huge media circus created later in the year as the OJ Simpson murder case unfolded.
January 1982 was very cold and snowy in the Eastern half of the U.S. Today a snowstorm paralyzed the Southeast and moved into the mid-Atlantic states as the day progressed. The storm proved deadly for passengers of a Ft. Lauderdale bound Air Florida jet flying out of Washington, D.C in the middle of the afternoon.
Not de-iced properly, the plane was unable to gain sufficient altitude and crashed into the Potomac River after takeoff from National Airport when its tail wing clipped a nearby bridge - just a few miles from the White House. Dramatic TV footage showed rescuers desperately trying to reach some passengers in the icy waters. Unfortunately, unlike the "Miracle on the Hudson" 27 years later, very few passengers survived since this was a crash and not a water landing. Only five passeners survived - 78 others (and four motorists on the bridge) were killed.
Although my office (ad agency Young & Rubicam) had closed early because of the snow (which began during lunchtime in NYC) I was still in my office when I heard the radio bulletin reporting on the crash late that afternoon.
Because I briefly worked on the Eastern Airlines account at Y&R I knew the repercussions a plane crash had for media planners working on any airline account. All media outlets carrying airline advertising had to be contacted to make sure all ads were pulled (although most outlets knew to do this without being contacted, the calls still had be made). However, this time no one at Y&R had to scramble because the agency had lost the Eastern account four months earlier (after 17 years).
I first heard word of the impending blizzard on Saturday evening while I was out in NJ visiting my brother and his family for a late holiday get-together. I was enthralled by the blizzard warning scrolling on the screen of The Weather Channel because I'd never before experienced a full-fledged blizzard. The next day the snow started falling at around noon and it was coming down fast and furious by late afternoon. That night I walked around my Greenwich Village neighborhood in the teeth of the storm (with howling winds gusting to 40-50 mph) snapping beautiful photos that were enhanced by the visual effect the flash had on the snowflakes.
Not surprisingly, the office was closed on Monday (some co-workers from NJ were out two to three days). The snow stopped falling early in the afternoon and again I went out with my camera. The texture and deepness of the snow brought to mind walks on the beach. At one point I trudged over to the West Side Highway and found that there was no rush hour traffic whatsoever. Instead, a phalanx of garbage trucks put into service as snowplows was the only activity here and on most city streets.
The storm was especially paralyzing in Philly and NJ where 2 to 3 feet of snow fell. It was such an expansive storm that 1-foot accumulations extended all the way westward into Kentucky and Ohio. Here in NYC 20.2" fell with 3 and 4-foot drifts topping cars and taxis parked on the streets. There was no mail delivery for two days and no trash pick-up for eight. Staten Island reported 29", Newark 28" and LaGuardia Airport 24". Manhattan's normally congested sidewalks were made even more crowded by walls of plowed and shovelled snow (in addition to bags of uncollected trash & discarded Christmas trees) that confined pedestrians to narrow pathways. Persistent cold weather kept the snow around for a number of weeks.
This was the deepest snowfall of my lifetime, topping the 17.6" that fell in a big February 1983 snowstorm. (However, some of the snows of my childhood back in Pittsburgh, especially the 15" that fell in January 1966 and 14" in January 1964, seemed deeper because I was a few feet shorter than my adult height of 6'1".) This blizzard contributed mightily to the winter of 1995-96 becoming New York City's snowiest winter ever. 75.6 inches fell in Central Park, close to fifty inches more than a typical winter.
If you'd like to read about other New York City snowstorms I've written a post on my weather blog, NYC Weather Archive, that recaps the snowstorms we've experienced since the winter of 1978/79. To go to it please click here.
The day before Thanksgiving 1971 was a snowy one in the hills of Western Pennsylvania (about 4" fell). I was in the 9th grade at the time and my dad had gotten four tickets at work to tonight's Penguins hockey game at Pittsburgh's Civic Arena. I went with my older sister Linda, older brother Darrell (home for the holiday during his freshman year at Indiana University of PA) and a neighbor from down the street. The Penguins lost to Toronto 2-1 but it was an enjoyable outing nonetheless.
Walking home after getting off the bus we were playing around in the snow and throwing an occasional snowball. At one point I jerked my head to avoid one being thrown and my glasses flew off. After looking for them for some time with no luck I ran home to get a flashlight (Mom joined us). Finally, in the midst of our search a neighbor approached in his car and stopped when he saw our search party in the middle of the street. He stayed so we could look in the light cast by his high beams and shortly thereafter we found my glasses. We had been out in the cold for close to an hour.
Meanwhile, while we conducted our search another was about to unfold in the Pacific Northwest. A passenger named DB Cooper had hijacked a plane, demanded parachutes and $200,000 (about $1 million in today's $) and then jumped from the plane during a rainstorm into the wilderness north of Portland, Oregon. Although hijackings had become a hazard of air travel since the late 60's, the way this one was carried out made it unique. And although a bundle of deteriorated twenty-dollar bills was discovered in 1980, and traced back to those given him, Cooper himself was never found.
(The book D.B. Cooper: Dead or Alive? provides the full story of this mysterious man and his curious caper.) The following clip goes into greater detail about Cooper.
It was a dreary and rainy Tuesday but I was in good spirits for two reasons. First, the results from yesterday's mid-term elections were very positive as both houses of Congress returned to Democratic control. Second, I was getting paid for a research project I had recently completed about the U.S. Hispanic market. I went up to Chelsea at around noon to pick up my check from the research company I did the project for. From there I walked over to my bank to deposit it and while standing in line at HSBC I heard the surprising news on CNN that irascible Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was stepping down.
This news bulletin was like a beam of sunshine breaking through that day's clouds. Even better was the fact that for some reason the president decided to wait until after the election to make this announcement. Therefore, it was of no benefit to Republican candidates. This news made the day's pouring rain (the most of any day this year, a record-setting 3.60") more than bearable. In fact, as I walked home I felt lighthearted, just like Gene Kelly in his famous rain-splashing scene in the the movie Singin' in the Rain. At long last there appeared to be light at the end of the tunnel - and in two more years we would be delivered from evil.
