by Bill Evans
In the Bronx, two armed gunmen robbed a building superintendent. The thieves weren’t after his money; they took his snowblower!
Thousands of flights were canceled and travelers slept in airports up and down the entire East Coast. Travelers on United flight 801, which was supposed to fly from Kennedy Airport to Tokyo, were stranded in the plane on the runway for 7½ hours. One passenger reported later that the captain threatened to arrest people because they were getting too riotous.
Two feet of snow covered Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., which, in the two days of the storm, received more snow than what usually falls there in a whole year. All the highways in Illinois were shut down. A Metro train in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., slid and crashed into another train; one driver died.
In Frederick County, Maryland, the weight of the heavy snow collapsed a barn and killed one hundred cows.
Boston received 18 inches of snow, bringing the city’s seasonal total to a record 32 inches. Philadelphia came to a standstill with 30 inches. The mail couldn’t be delivered there.
In Pennsylvania, twenty-nine people died of heart attacks on January 8 as a result of shoveling driveways. Snow shoveling was dangerous in other ways: a 60-year-old man in an Allentown suburb accused his 70-year-old neighbor of shoveling snow onto his car; the angry neighbor pushed him down, and he died. Overall, ninety-nine Pennsylvanians died. Eighty of the deaths were due to the blizzard, the rest were from subsequent flooding.
The blizzard was not bad news for everyone. In Pocahontas County, West Virginia, a ski resort marveled at the 4 feet of snow that had accumulated.
As for me…despite my own forecast, on Saturday, January 6, three friends and I decided we could drive from New York City to Pittsburgh, catch the Pittsburgh Steelers and Buffalo Bills in an AFC playoff game, and get back to New York before the storm was in full force. But my timing was a bit off. It began snowing in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York City about 6 hours ahead of schedule. We left Pittsburgh at 7 A.M. Sunday morning and began our drive—or plow, I should say—back to the city. Cars were pulling off to the sides of the highways, with passengers inside, and snow was beginning to cover them. I did phone-in reports live on WABC-TV from the SUV as we slowly trekked across Pennsylvania.
What should have been a 5-to-6-hour drive became a 17-hour drive! We constantly had to stop along the Pennsylvania Turnpike to clean our wiper blades and headlights. When we were halfway across the state, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Authority closed the highway! But we couldn’t just stop on the highway and wait out the storm—we might have died. So we pressed on, traveling the closed turnpike, which wasn’t going to be plowed anytime soon.
I had to get back. I had to be on the air! This is what a meteorologist lives for, to be on-camera during the “big one.” I was on-air for what was thought to be the “big one” in 1993, and here it was happening all over again! I was supposed to be on camera at 4 A.M. Monday morning. The storm would still be going, and I was determined to get to the studio.
We drove through toll plazas that looked like ghost towns. The turnpike was abandoned except for the occasional car trapped on the roadside. Soon, the snow piled so high on the roadway it was above the headlights of our SUV. We were plowing through it like a snowplow. It was amazing. However, I do not suggest or recommend that you or anyone do that!
We slowly worked our way across the Delaware River Bridge to the New Jersey Turnpike, the “thunder road.” We heard on the radio that the state of New Jersey had officially closed the turnpike. Motorists were told to stay away as the road would not be plowed until the storm was nearly over. The snow was easily waist-to chest-deep on the turnpike. We drove on despite the blinding snow and howling winds—a total whiteout. I’m sure we wove over every lane of the four-lane turnpike. Our tire tracks were immediately wiped out by snow that seemed to be like sugar pouring from a container.
We made our way about halfway across New Jersey to Montclair. Exhausted, we decided to stop at a train station there, where I would try to make my way to New York City, and my friends would seek shelter at a neighboring home. We had heard on the radio that the trains were running on a very limited schedule. Trains with plows attached to the engine were clearing the tracks.
At 2 A.M., a train reached the station in Montclair. Great! I could make the broadcast at 4 A.M. The train pulled into Penn Station at 3 A.M. It looked as if the whole city of New York was in the train station, seeking refuge from the monster raging outside. When I got to the street, the wind was blasting at 50 mph. Snow was not only blowing sideways, the drifts reached up four stories on buildings!
Bags in hand, I ran up Eighth Avenue. The snow on the sidewalks was up to my waist, and even up to my chest in places where it had collected between the buildings. Who needs Mount Everest to climb?
I could tell it was going to take hours at this pace to make it to the television studios of WABC-TV. I needed a ride. But there were no cars, not even a police car. The city that never sleeps was desolate. It was now 3:30 A.M. and I was due on-air in 30 minutes. I was at Eighth Avenue and 47th Street—twenty blocks from the studio, which in N.Y.C. distance is one mile. In usual conditions, it would be no more than a 20-minute walk to the studio. But I could never trudge there in waist-deep snow before four o’clock.
But wait! Coming up Eighth, I saw headlights. It was a taxi! With its VACANT light on! What was he doing out in this weather? No one was out. The streets were a disaster. But I saw it as the cavalry arriving to save the day! I headed toward the taxi and I noticed it was stuck, spinning like crazy in a snow pack. I ran over and helped the driver by pushing the car and getting it going up the street again. I asked the driver if he would give me a ride to work. He agreed, and I got in. The driver said his name was Papa. He was from Senegal and had never seen snow before!
As we made our way up Eighth, I had to get out twice to push, but we made it to the studio at 3:50 A.M. A whole ten minutes to spare! I asked Papa what the fare was. He didn’t know. He’d forgotten to start the meter! It wouldn’t have mattered what the fare was, I was going to reward him handsomely for the rescue. I gave Papa a very large cash reward for his kindness to a stranger. Papa said I was his last fare and he was headed home. I hope he made it!
As I was getting ready to go on camera, the executive producer said to me, “That’s a heck of a blizzard out there.” I said, “You’re right. You’d have to be a fool to go out in a storm like that.”
Famous Snows
Ninety-six moviegoers died in the Knickerbocker Theatre in Washington, D.C., when heavy snows caved in the building’s roof on January 29, 1922.
A snowstorm brought about the first case of cannibalism tried in the United States. In January 1874, Alfred Packer (sometimes spelled Alferd) led a team of prospectors into the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. At a camp near Montrose, the group of twenty-one men was advised not to cross the mountains because of snow. Packer and five others went anyway, and sometime in February or March, they got lost and snowbound. In April, Packer showed up at the Los Pinos Indian Agency alone. His companions were never seen. Human remains were found in August on the trail. Packer was eventually tried for cannibalism and sentenced to be hanged, but later his sentence was reduced to prison time. Some say that after the trial, he became a vegetarian. His legacy? He’s a Colorado folk hero, and a cafeteria at the Boulder University Memorial Center is named the Alferd Packer Memorial Grill.
Animals in the Snow
On March 8, 1717, approximately 1,200 sheep that had been trapped in a snowstorm were found on Shelter Island in New York. They had been there for four weeks and only a hundred were still alive.
Four out of every five head of cattle in Kansas died in a raging blizzard on January 13, 1886.
A three-day blizzard that started on January 28, 1887, wiped out millions of free-range cattle in Montana. Cowboy “Teddy Blue” reported that by the time the “Big Die-Up” was over, more than 60 percent of Montana’s cattle were dea
d. This snowy, cold winter hastened the end of the Old West’s open range system, as people moved toward homesteading and ranching.
One million Thanksgiving turkeys froze to death in a South Dakota blizzard on November 18, 1943.
Over a foot of snow fell in Arkansas on January 6, 1988, killing 3.5 million chickens. Another 1,750,000 chickens died across the border in Texas. The following day, two million more chickens died in Alabama.
* True Bill Evans Weather Story *
A Trip to -70 Below!
Cold, that’s what! One of the coolest places on Earth for weather is in New Hampshire, atop Mount Washington. Before the Europeans arrived, Native Americans called it Agiocochook, “Home of the Great Spirit.” During a wild storm in 1934, a gust of wind at 231 mph pushed across the summit. That wind speed still stands as the all-time surface-wind-speed record on Earth! Because of the mountain’s unique location, with arctic air pouring in from Canada and its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and the jet stream, it’s a perfect spot for extreme weather.
Take for instance the recipe that created the record winds. A storm over the Great Lakes, a batch of energy off the coast of North Carolina, and a ridge of high pressure over Canada. It’s a concoction that can only come together at this one place in the world. You have to take a trip there to the observatory. I did, and it turned into the story of a lifetime.
I took a producer and a cameraman to the observatory to do a feature story on the work the scientists do there. The first to climb Mount Washington was a guy named Darby Field back in 1642. In 1853—before the Civil War—Tip Top House was built and still stands today. Pretty good construction back then!
The observatory has been recording and disseminating weather information for more than one hundred years, since 1870. It also serves as a benchmark station, which means it’s a climatic station with a long record of data obtained in a single location with no change in the environment of the station. It’s a part of the Historical Climatic Network of the United States and is used for the measuring of cosmic ray activity in the upper atmosphere, developing robust instrumentation for severe weather environments, and conducting many types of severe weather research and testing. It is truly an interesting and provocative place.
On a summer day, if there’s no traffic, you can drive to the top of Mount Washington in about five minutes. Everywhere in the Northeast you see vehicles with bumper stickers that say, “This vehicle climbed Mount Washington.” I used to think how cool that must have been. In the 1970s, road rallies were held where race cars drove to the top in close to a minute.
But in winter, it’s totally impossible to drive to the mountain’s top in a car, a truck, or even an SUV. You can only get there by snowcat. So now, when I see those bumper stickers, I know that they made the trip in the summertime, and I always say to myself, “Hey, why don’t you try it in winter?” Mount Washington is one of the coolest places and most bizarre places I have ever visited.
On our trip to the summit and the observatory, there had been plenty of snow and plenty of cold. At the bottom of the mountain, the sun was out and the wind was calm. It was postcard beautiful. The snowcat driver, a guy who could easily have passed for a Top Gun fighter pilot, calmly said, “Put on all your gear because it’s a bear at the top.” I thought to myself, “I lived through the Storm of the Century and the Blizzard of 1996; how much worse could it be?” We looked toward the top of the mountain but we could not see it because it was covered in clouds.
We took the snowcat to the top. The vehicle is heated, smooth-riding, and comfy. The ride lasted about 45 minutes to an hour. When we got to the top of the mountain and left the nice, toasty, comfy snowcat, it was as if we had been transported to the North Pole! The wind nearly knocked me to the ground. I grabbed the side of the snowcat and hung on. “Howling” does not even come close to describing the wind at that moment on Mount Washington. Words like “sledgehammer” come to mind. It’s a very heavy, constant, lead-weight type of wind…except the lead was coming at us at 55 to 65 mph, and no human can stand upright in a wind of that speed.
The snowcat driver looked out his window at me and said, “That’s nothing, weatherman; you are in for the experience of your life.” He was right.
When I looked out across the summit, I thought I was on the moon. It was a crusty landscape of snow and ice. The mountain’s slopes have rocky holes and jagged craters that resemble the surface of the moon. Locals call autumn “ankle-breaking season,” because of the number of hikers injured by getting their ankles twisted in those jagged crevices.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce
We had dressed as though we were going to Antarctica. I had on two sets of thermal underwear, two pairs of thermal socks, insulated snow pants, a fleece top under a thermal jacket, and a heavy polar coat on top of that. I wore earmuffs, a thermal cap, and a knit cap over that. A face gaiter covered my entire face (it looked like a hockey mask), and ski goggles protected my eyes. I wore special insulated boots with crampons (ice spikes) attached. I also had a pair of ice climbers, very high-tech ice axes. I looked like a combination of the Michelin Man and Jason from Friday the 13th!
On our first day, the mountain scenery brought excitement, a bit of anxiousness, and a sizeable amount of fear. The wind had picked up to 55 to 60 mph; it would have been hard to stand up on dry ground, let alone on feet of ice. The crampons on our boots were the only thing that kept us from being blown away. Although we looked like Neil Armstrong bouncing around on the moon, we were able to work our way around the observatory and admire the beauty of the rime ice that had collected on everything. The temperature was near 0ºF (-17.8°C) and the windchill was -33ºF (-36.1°C). We could stay out only 15 to 20 minutes in that cold at the very most, even with all our gear on.
We had to make it one of the fastest shoots I’ve ever done. We couldn’t shoot longer than 15 minutes because the camera’s lens and internal parts would freeze! Our personal still cameras and cell phones would not work for more than just a few minutes in the cold either. Once we earned the world record for shooting a story, we returned to the warmth of the observatory, which is a half-circular concrete and steel bunker. The structure is plenty strong, though it does make some eerie, creaky noises when the wind really gets going.
Mount Washington, by global standards, is a small peak; regardless, its weather can rival that of some of the most extreme and rugged places on earth. There are colder places, like Antarctica, and snowier places, like Alaska or the Cascade Range, but on this mountain, there are days each winter when the combination of life-threatening weather factors is similar to the extreme weather that has been recorded in the polar regions and on peaks four times Mount Washington’s height. We found this out firsthand.
After we awoke the next morning in the observatory, and as we packed our bags to head back down the mountain in the snowcat, the observatory staff gave us an update on the weather that was quite shocking. One of the biggest storms of the season was blowing in fast from Canada. The storm was forecast to be so cold and windy, we would not be able to get down from the mountain that day. The oil inside the snowcat would freeze in the extreme cold that was on the way! So we were stranded on top of Mount Washington for who knew how long.
The monster storm was due to arrive that evening after dark. We could tell that the wind was beginning to pick up by the sounds the observatory structure was making—moaning, creaking, and groaning—as the blasts of wind struck it. I wanted to feel the full force of this storm at its height.
The phones began ringing in the observatory. It was the staff back at the television station, wanting to know if we were okay. Radio stations and newspapers were also calling, to get interviews and updates on the storm, plus to find out how a meteorologist could get stuck in a snowstorm! We called our families to let them know that the mountain did not want us to leave.
As night came to Mount Washington, so did the abominable wind monster. I suited up with the cr
ew to head outside to the observation platform, which was in the direct path of the wind. It was dark, but the lights of the observatory helped us to see the snow being blasted toward us. As I opened the door, the wind snapped my head back, causing the back of my head to hit the iron door. Ouch! Blurry-eyed, I crawled up the ladder with the wind and snow smashing me against the observatory. Had the structure not been behind me, I would have been blown away. You can only hold on to the railing for so long before exhaustion sets in. I crouched down on the top of the platform, clinging to the rails for dear life. The noise was unbelievable. The wind hurt. Under all that protection, even my hair hurt!
I was terrified. I thought about what it must have been like for the people who have tried to brave this type of weather to climb this mountain. There have been 135 fatalities on Mount Washington since 1849, many of them involving ill-prepared hikers, skiers, and climbers. Many of them had no idea what they were facing. Many expected conditions at the top to be similar to those in the valley, only to find themselves, like me, in a whole different treacherous world.
Mount Washington, New Hampshire
NASA
The winds were clocked by the anemometer at 100 mph and the temperature was –20ºF (-6.7°C). That gave us a wind chill of -69ºF (-56.1°C)! What’s that like? When I spit, it froze instantly in the air and hit the observatory as a piece of ice. I could see my breath as it came out. It made a hissing, crackling sound as it immediately froze. I found a square piece of thin ice and when I broke it, it sounded as if I had broken a piece of glass. The rime ice that coated the buildings—shaped by the high winds—made that same glass-shattering sound when we broke that, too. Where the ice was thick, I tried to hammer it with the ice ax, but the tool could not penetrate the ice and just bounced off. Once we got back to the iron door of the observatory, I took a cup of water and tossed it outside; it froze in the air instantly and blew past the building. Then I took a cup of hot coffee and tossed it outside; it, too, froze in the air and blew away. The sound of the water freezing was like crackling, and the hot coffee was even louder!
