The Weather Notebook: Perfect Winter Storm

Perfect Winter Storm
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Enophiles have their favorite vintage of wine, baseball fans their most memorable home run - so why shouldn't weather nuts cherish their own personal perfect storm?

Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook.

Among sophisticated snow hounds, one very popular storm is the great East Coast blizzard of January 6 to 8, 1996.

For starters, it was a classic slow-moving Nor'easter, a textbook scenario for heavy snow all over the northeast. After brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, the storm moved up the coast, pausing near Cape Hatteras to pick up steam. Then when it was nice and deep, the low began to creep ever so slowly over the major metropolitan areas, pausing for about thirty-six hours over each one to dump stunning quantities of snow - 24.5 inches on Washington's Dulles airport, 30.7 on Philly (an all-time record), over 20 on New York City.

For the National Weather Service, this was a storm not only to remember but to brag about: forecasters issued watches and warnings up to two days ahead of time. They advised the public that accumulations would be measured in feet, not inches. And, on top of all this, there was a dramatic sequel, or rather series of sequels: two more storms arrived the same week, plastering Baltimore and Washington with another foot of snow. Then, a week later, temperatures rose dramatically, hitting 70 in some places, it poured down rain, and all the snow melted, basically in one night, causing some of the worst flooding on record.

The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mt. Washington Observatory. It is supported by the National Science Foundation. For more snowstorms, visit our website at mountwashington.org. Thanks today to Seattle writer, David Laskin.