It was a little past 1 AM on February 3rd, 1959 when American musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson were killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa along with pilot Roger Peterson. Weather conditions were certainly contributing factors in the plane crash as there was poor visibility on that cold night with snow blowing across the runway. Hours before, Holly and his tour mates were on the eleventh night of their “Winter Dance Party” tour through the snow-covered Midwest. It was a Monday and a school night, but 1,100 teenagers crammed into the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa for two sold out shows with the second one ending around midnight. The event later became known as “The Day the Music Died” after singer-songwriter Don McLean referred to it as such in his 1971 song “American Pie”.
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Last Friday marked the 36th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster which occurred on January 28, 1986, when the NASA Space Shuttle orbiter Challenger (mission STS-51-L) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. STS-51-L was the 25th American Space Shuttle Program flight since the program began in 1981. It was also the first mission to have a civilian on board, American teacher Christa McAuliffe. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida at 11:39 EST (16:39 UTC). According to the Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, weather conditions were likely one of the factors that contributed to the incident. Tests conducted during the subsequent investigation showed that O-rings were much less resilient at lower temperatures, but the extreme cold at the Kennedy Space Center was not the only weather factor involved with this tragedy. Wind shear aloft may have been a contributing factor as well with two different airstreams in the vicinity of the launch site of the Space Shuttle Challenger.
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December 1776 was a desperate time for George Washington and the American Revolution. Morale was low, hope for winning the war was diminishing, and the Continental Army led by George Washington was thinning in numbers after many battles lost to the British. December began with lots of rain and muddy travel conditions for the men which did not help with their spirits. After retreating through New Jersey, they set up camp on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River where the army was met with very cold weather that led to plenty of ice on the water. All in all, things were not looking good for Washington's army. However, George Washington devised a plan that would change the course of the war and the history of our nation.
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The weather on Oahu, Hawaii in the early morning hours of Sunday, December 7th, 1941 was not at all unusual for the time of year with mild temperatures and mainly clear skies. Unfortunately, the weather conditions on that particular day would play a role in the bombing of the U.S. naval base by Japanese fighter planes at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. As Japanese fighters crossed the Pacific Ocean, they were given hope that their mission would succeed when the announcement was made of “clouds mostly over the mounts…visibility good”. It is believed that the decision to attack on that particular day had plenty to do with the projected favorable weather conditions.
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Tropical cyclone activity across the Northern Hemisphere has been below-normal in 2021 in much the same way as it was last year. Specifically, while the Atlantic Basin featured above-normal tropical activity in this year and last, the Pacific Ocean experienced below-normal conditions in both years leading the way to below-normal levels across the hemisphere as a whole. In terms of tornadoes, it has been another below-normal season in the US with no EF-5’s recorded. There was, however, tornadic activity in some unusual places in 2021 including the Mid-Atlantic and New England.
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For 60 years, the Colony Glacier of Alaska hid the remains of 52 servicemen in a frozen grave after an Air Force plane crashed into the side of a mountain during bad weather. The military transport plane was on route to Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage when it crashed into Mount Gannett on November 22nd, 1952 in the Chugach Mountain Range about 40 miles east of Anchorage. The wreckage of the plane and the remains of the 52 servicemen slid into the glacier next to the mountain. Recovery efforts never got into high gear that year as Alaska’s unforgiving winter came on quickly and by later the following year, the glacier and new deep snow pack had claimed the aircraft and its passengers.
It was not until 60 years later in June 2012 that the wreckage was spotted about 12 miles from the original crash site by members of the Army National Guard during a routine training mission. Since then crews have returned every summer to try to recover the remains and personal effects during a small window of opportunity of about one month when it is relatively safe to do so on the glacier. This painstaking effort is in a race against time, however, as the relentlessly north-flowing Colony Glacier continues to advance relatively quickly and it won’t be long before the plane wreckage and passenger remains are pushed into nearby Inner Lake George - and perhaps lost forever to history.
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Forty-six years have passed since a major storm over the Great Lakes helped to sink the SS Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior taking the lives of all 29 crew members on November 10th, 1975. When launched on June 7, 1958, it was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes, and to this day she remains the largest to have sunk there. The Edmund Fitzgerald was in the worst possible location during the worst weather of the ferocious storm. The wind and waves from the west hit the freighter broadside as it tried to flee south to safety in Whitefish Bay. The Edmund Fitzgerald was loaded with about 26,000 tons of taconite pellets on November 9th, 1975, at Superior, Wisconsin and was bound for Detroit, Michigan when the storm hit.
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Baseball’s playoffs will begin tonight in Boston with a do-or-die “wild card” game between the Yankees and Red Sox at Fenway Park. The weather should turn out to be pretty cooperative with cloudy and cool conditions likely as high pressure sets up shop over northern New England. Weather can certainly play a role in playoffs during the month of October (or November) and has indeed had an impact on the World Series in recent history in terms of temperatures and/or precipitation.
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At the end of the 19th century, America was beaming with confidence and feeling bigger and stronger than ever before. The city of Galveston, Texas was booming with a population of 37,000 residents on the east end of Galveston Island which runs about thirty miles in length and anywhere from one and a half to three miles in width. Its position on the harbor of Galveston Bay along the Gulf of Mexico made it the center of trade and the biggest city in Texas in the year 1900. A quarter of a century earlier, a nearby town was destroyed by a powerful hurricane and this object lesson was heeded by many Galveston residents and talks of a seawall to protect the city were quite prevalent. However, no seawall was built and sand dunes along the shore were actually cut down to fill low areas in the city, removing what little barrier there was to the Gulf of Mexico. This proved to be a fatal mistake for the city of Galveston in what nobody could foresee happening to this magical place that seemed destined to become the New York of the Gulf of Mexico.
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In a movie filled with memorable quotes, one of the shortest and simplest might have been “It’s a Twister!”, but it was part of a tornado scene that is still considered to be a classic more than eight decades later. August 25, 1939 was the official release date of the “Wizard of Oz" which was the first movie to depict an authentic looking tornado using improbable “1930’s style” special effects. Through the decades, this all-time classic has inspired movie-goers and “weather weenies” alike with the scene of a twister lifting Dorothy’s home into the sky over rural Kansas farm land.
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