In August of 2017 America went crazy for the first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse on US soil since 1918 and it provided a great opportunity for scientists and all sky watchers. What was referred to as “The Great American Solar Eclipse” took place on August 21st, 2017 when the moon passed between the sun and earth. Total solar eclipses occur somewhere on Earth every year or so, but generally cast their shadows over oceans or remote land masses. If you missed the 2017 total solar eclipse or it turned out to be cloudy in your particular area then there will be another opportunity in just about six months from now on Monday, April 8th, 2024. This time the Moon's dark shadow, about 115 miles wide, will cross Mexico, sweep northeast from Texas to Maine, and then darken the Canadian Maritimes.
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On September 21, 1938, one of the most destructive and powerful hurricanes in recorded history struck Long Island and Southern New England. Little media attention was given to the powerful hurricane while it was out at sea as Europe was on the brink of war and was the overriding story of the time. There was no advanced meteorological technology such as radar or satellite imagery to warn of the storm’s approach.
This storm has taken on a few names over the years including “The Great New England Hurricane of 1938", "The Long Island Express", and the "Yankee Clipper". It was the first “major” hurricane to strike New England since the year 1869. In the long period after this storm, New England was directly hit by a hurricane on an average of once every 6.7 years until 1991 - and there have been none since.
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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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On September 1st, 1859, a ferocious solar storm took place that impacted much of the planet. This ferocious solar storm is now known as the “Carrington Event”, named after the British astronomer, Richard Carrington, who witnessed the largest solar flare from his own private observatory which caused a major coronal mass ejection (CME) to travel directly toward Earth. Recent studies of solar storms have warned that these type of “Carrington Events” may not be quite as rare as once thought (e.g., Hayakawa et al). Many previous studies leaned heavily on Western Hemisphere accounts, omitting data from the Eastern Hemisphere. A super storm of the same magnitude as the “Carrington Event” in today’s world would very likely have a much more damaging impact than it did in the 19th century potentially causing widespread power outages along with disruptions to navigation, air travel, banking, and all forms of digital communication.
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It was shortly after noon on August 24th in the year 79 A.D. and Mount Vesuvius sent a tall cloud of steam and ash high up into the atmosphere. The ancient Roman town of Pompeii near modern day Naples was soon covered in complete darkness and the thickness of the falling debris increased by about 6 to 8 inches per hour. The rocks which comprised the debris were up to 3 inches in diameter and fell with a speed of up to 100 miles/hour. This first phase of the eruption led to casualties primarily caused by roof collapses. After 12 hours of continuous explosive activity, the second phase of the eruption began and it was characterized by substantial flow of lava down the sloping Mount Vesuvius and this caused additional deaths and destruction. In fact, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius spewed 1.5 million tons of lava per second into Pompeii and surrounding towns. In a short period of time, an estimated 15 to 20 percent of Pompeii’s population died (about two thousand people), the small towns of Herculaneum, Oplonti and Stabiae were destroyed, and Pompeii was changed forever.
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1969 was a remarkable year and will be long remembered as the year when man first walked on the moon, the Miracle Mets shocked the sports world, and the Woodstock Festival took place in upstate New York. It will also be remembered as the year when a major hurricane – Hurricane Camille – struck the United States as a category 5 storm and the second most intense tropical cyclone on record (only the 1935 Labor Day hurricane had a lower central pressure at landfall). Hurricane Camille made landfall in Mississippi and wreaked havoc from the Gulf States to as far north as the Mid-Atlantic region with widespread flooding, record rainfall, and it cost the lives of several hundreds of people along its path of destruction.
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The high temperature in Death Valley, California this Sunday, July 16th, could reach an amazing 130°F, but that would still be short of the all-time record which occurred there way back in 1913. On July 10th, 1913, the weather observer at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley recorded a high temperature of 134°F. One hundred and ten years later, this is still the highest air temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth. In addition to this all-time and worldwide high temperature record, the year of 1913 produced numerous other extreme weather events.
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Nowadays, when the people of New Orleans think of devastating hurricanes they think of Katrina, but before 2005, the most notorious storm name in Louisiana was Audrey. Sixty-six years ago this week, Hurricane Audrey slammed into the southwest coast of Louisiana and became the earliest major hurricane (category 3) to make landfall in the US. The last June hurricane to make landfall in the US was Bonnie in 1986 and there have been only four since 1950 and all of those happened on the Gulf coast. Perhaps the most active hurricane season on record in the US is 1886 and there were three category 2 hurricanes in June that particular year.
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The official Atlantic Basin tropical season was barely underway in June of 1972 when a polar front interacted with an upper-level trough of low pressure over the Yucatan Peninsula. Within a few days, a tropical depression formed and the system moved slowly eastward and emerged in the western Caribbean Sea by the middle of the month. The depression began to intensify over the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea and soon became Tropical Storm Agnes – the first named storm of the 1972 tropical season. Ultimately, Agnes would reach hurricane status, grow to a diameter of about 1000 miles, and become the costliest hurricane at the time to hit the US and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was the prime focus of its wrath.
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With thousands of lives on the line, there is no doubt that the weather forecast made for the D-Day invasion in Normandy, France during World War II was the most important of all-time and one of the most difficult as well given the lack of sophisticated forecasting tools that we enjoy in today’s world. The first satellite image was still nearly sixteen years away (TIROS on April 1, 1960) and reliable computer forecast models were still decades away. This Tuesday, June 6th, marks the 79th anniversary of the D-Day invasion and the weather forecast for that historic event makes for quite an interesting story in what turned out to be a pivotal moment in world history. Years of detailed planning went into the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944, but success hinged on one element that no military commander could control — the weather. Defying his colleagues, Captain James Martin Stagg advised General Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower to postpone the invasion of Normandy by one day from June 5th to June 6th because of uncertain weather conditions in a weather forecast that changed the course of World War II and altered world history.
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