Posted on 02/07/2010 9:38:08 AM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Residents of the US east coast began digging out from under a thick blanket of snow Sunday after a record-breaking blizzard paralyzed Washington and the region, snapping power to 350,000 residents and killing two people.
The monster storm stretched more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from eastern Indiana across into New Jersey and then down as far south as North Carolina, affecting tens of millions of Americans.
With winds gusting at almost 60 miles (90 kilometers) an hour, meteorologists said they had recorded snowfall as high as 38 inches (96 centimeters) near Baltimore, Maryland -- a record.
As of late afternoon Saturday, a total of 32.4 inches (82 centimeters) was recorded at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington -- another record, according to the National Weather Service.
That two-day accumulation beat the previous record, compiled during the blizzard of January 1996, the service said.
The heavy, sticky snow toppled trees and snapped power lines, leaving more than 350,000 people without electricity in Maryland and neighboring Virginia. Related article: Monster US storm boon for forecasters: expert
"Snowmageddon here in DC," President Barack Obama told Democrats in a speech, only a year after chiding the capital for over responding to small snowfalls.
Forecasters warned residents to hunker down, with no let-up in the weather for most of the day, and said chilly temperatures on Sunday would mean the wet snow would swiftly turn icy.
"Officially this won't break records in DC, but unofficially, you bet it will," Paul Kochin, an expert in northeast weather systems, ..
"It's very rare to have two such big storms in one season," .. the capital region was crippled by a smaller but still massive storm in December.
Maryland and Virginia, were bearing the brunt of the storm and seeing the highest snowfalls, ..
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
“compiled during the blizzard of January 1996”
OK, I remember 79 and 83....but 96????
I certainly can't blame some people if they do not like snow. It could bad health-wise, location, or a variety of reasons related to cold weather. I truly feel sorry for the people who are inconvenienced, or hurt, by this kind of weather.Here, in NW Lower Michigan, we are typically not savaged by that kind of weather. Yes, we can get 3 or 4 feet of snow in one storm, but 2 days later, we are moving again. We also don't have mud slides, firestorms, earthquakes, tornados, or hurricanes. As far as flooding goes, we are twenty feet above Lake Michigan. So, if the lakes were over-flowing, we would have to build an Ark.
In my case, I prefer to live in the North Country, so we adapt.
Also, something I read—the weather station at Reagan National traditionally badly under-reports snow accumulation compared to the surrounding areas. Whatever fancy snow-measuring device they use is actually on the roof of the airport, which tends to cause accumulations to show as lower than if it was on the ground. On the December 19th storm, it under-reported by something like 30% and that pattern seems to have held true for this storm as well. Everywhere around the airport was in the 22-26” range, but DCA recorded 18”.
The irony is, the all-time record snow for Washington was the “Knickerbocker storm” (so named because it collapsed the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre), which was 27-28”. That was measured somewhere in northwest DC since there was no National Airport in the 1920s. Between DCA’s less favorable location, and the known underreporting problems, the record of the Knickerbocker storm may never be broken, since DCA is the “station of record” for all of Washington DC.
}:-)4
National sits on fill in the Potomac River, which is a tidal river at that point (I think tides affect this river north until the Key Bridge between Georgetown and the Rosslyn district of Arlington). The water moderates the temperature, so it is a few degrees warmer there in the winter than out at Dulles. Dulles is in sight of the Blue Ridge; on winter nights, it tends to get 10 degrees colder than downtown DC.
Also, this particular storm seemed to be stronger toward the Shenandoah valley, as snow totals were larger west of DC than east of DC (the Cumberland area, which is northwest of the Shenandoah valley corridor (I-81), got 3 feet of snow).
Knickerbocker Theatre was located near the junction of 18th Street and Columbia Road in the heart of the Adams-Morgan district in NW DC (roughly 6-7 blocks NE of the Washington Hilton hotel on Connecticut Avenue).
Guesstimate is around 28 inches for Mt. Airy, MD.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
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