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1843 Snowstorm
Wed Mar 05, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
It's unlikely that you or your grandparents -- or even their grandparents! -- recall the
winter of 1843, but it was truly a March to remember. Hi I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather
Notebook.
Since 1843, the area from Minnesota down to the Gulf Coast has never again seen such brutal
cold so late in the winter. How do we know given that the National Weather Service didn't even
exist? In the early 1800s, the nation's weather was recorded by surgeons in the Army who
wanted to know how weather and climate affected the men in uniform. In 1843 there were about
50 army posts that kept weather records, and they tell us it was a brutal March.
Stations in Iowa and Minnesota dropped below zero night after night, even after the spring
equinox. The magnolia trees in Natchez, Mississippi, hung heavy with three inches of snow on
the 25th of March. That storm brought a dusting of snow all the way to the Gulf Coast and
dropped 15 inches in Tennessee. Up in northwest Indiana, the snow cover was still two feet
deep on the 30th of March. Even back in the civilized East, this wasn't your typical winter.
Parts of coastal Maine received over 200 inches of snow for the season.
What a contrast to recent years. In the past decade, March has behaved like a lamb through and
through. Just last year, it hit 80 degrees in Pittsburgh and Detroit more than a week before
winter officially ended. But March isn't always so nice. Your great-great-great-grandparents
could have told you that.
Thanks today to science writer Bob Henson. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount
Washington Observatory. It is supported generously by Subaru of America and the National
Science Foundation.
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