Category: Famous Snowstorms

See also: “Interactive: $1 Billion U.S. Extreme Storm Disasters, 2011–2017[1]” Five years ago, Superstorm Sandy cut a destructive path up the East Coast of the United States, taking 117 lives, leaving thousands of people homeless, and causing more than $71 billion in damage. Experts described it as a 1-in-260-year event, meaning that a storm of that caliber had a 0.3 percent...

Dairy producers in Texas and New Mexico have estimated that the number of animals that died during the recent Winter Storm Goliath will climb to more than 30,000.  The winds are believed to be the cause for many of the animals’ deaths. It created drifts as high as 14 feet and pushed animals into fenced corners where they suffocated, according...

Winter storms differ from tropical storms not only in terms of their areas of formation and tracks, but above all in their intensity and geographical extent. They form in the transition zone between subtropical and polar climate zones. When outbreaks of cold polar air meet subtropical warm air masses, extensive low-pressure vortices are generated. The storm intensity peaks in late autumn and winter, when...

Above: The Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford, England, as viewed from the southeast circa 1814 (about the same time the continuous daily series of temperature records commenced). Image credit: R. Ackerman, A History of the University of Oxford, 1814, Green Templeton College, Oxford. I recently received an advance copy of a fascinating weather book, Oxford Weather and Climate Since 1767, authored...