What's the most extreme winter weather you've ever witnesse?

[tropicstorm]

-28 F below zero at the top of a mountain (ski lift) in Austria, 1993

[JenyEliza]

Blizzard of '93 in Atlanta. What an awesome storm that was....closed the town down for days!!

[Anonymous]

January of '93 in Tahoe. I wish I could remember exactly when but, we got 128 inches in 30 hours. At one point we set a record for 12 inches/hour for 4 hours! It was awesome going from daytime to nightime as the house went under the snow and all the windows got covered. I had to shovel for 16 hours the next day to get the Jeep out of the driveway.

I'd have given anything to be there with you!! I would have shoveled all that snow myself!!!!

BRING IT!! BRING IT!!

[Portastorm]

Even though I have lived in Texas for 20 years, I grew up in northeastern Ohio and I vividly remember the "Great Blizzard of 1978." -- same storm that Miss Mary from Cincy wrote about earlier in this thread.

I remember waking up at 6 a.m. for school, very hard rain falling and quite windy. Took a shower and by the time I got out, it had turned to wet snow. In northeastern Ohio we experienced 6-10 inches of snow, hurricane-force winds, and temps dropping from upper 30s to single digits. Two days of similar weather followed. It was an incredible storm. I seem to recall missing about a week of school because of it, which was ... of course ... pretty cool. But then we had to go a few days extra in June which wasn't so cool!

[Stormsfury]

Christmas Snowstorm of 1989 (Dec 22nd-24th, 1989) actually 3 months after Hugo came ashore ... Hugo hit on the first day of fall, the winter storm on the first day on winter ... of course, the rest of the winter sucked but DEC 1989 sure made it a worthwhile one, even if it did only last for 4-7 days ...

President's Day Blizzard (the original recipe of 1979) .. MAJOR ICESTORM in the Charleston area with STRONG CAD, heavy precip falling through a subfreezing layer (26º-28º) while 850mb temperatures as warm as 6ºC (43º) ... 1"-2" of ice across the Lowcountry region, power out for days, mixed with some snow, heavier snow just inland ...

SF

[gravitylover1]

January of '93 in Tahoe. I wish I could remember exactly when but, we got 128 inches in 30 hours. At one point we set a record for 12 inches/hour for 4 hours! It was awesome going from daytime to nightime as the house went under the snow and all the windows got covered. I had to shovel for 16 hours the next day to get the Jeep out of the driveway.

I'd have given anything to be there with you!! I would have shoveled all that snow myself!!!!

BRING IT!! BRING IT!!

That's funny because I was thinking of you when I wrote that. You probably would've had the best Jebwalk of your career during the storm. There was little to no traffic on the roads and it was so quiet. The biggest problem I had was getting over the snowbank at the bottom of my driveway to get to the 7-11 across the street. In Nevada they sell beer 24 hours a day so I needed to be able to get there.

[nystate]

January of '93 in Tahoe. I wish I could remember exactly when but, we got 128 inches in 30 hours. At one point we set a record for 12 inches/hour for 4 hours! It was awesome going from daytime to nightime as the house went under the snow and all the windows got covered. I had to shovel for 16 hours the next day to get the Jeep out of the driveway.

I'd have given anything to be there with you!! I would have shoveled all that snow myself!!!!

BRING IT!! BRING IT!!

That's funny because I was thinking of you when I wrote that. You probably would've had the best Jebwalk of your career during the storm. There was little to no traffic on the roads and it was so quiet. The biggest problem I had was getting over the snowbank at the bottom of my driveway to get to the 7-11 across the street. In Nevada they sell beer 24 hours a day so I needed to be able to get there.

Interesting that you got all of that snow in 30 hours. Why didn't Tahoe break the record for the greatest 24 hour snowfall?

[CaptinCrunch]

January 13, 1982

One of the great north Texas snowfalls in the 20th century. Between 6-10 inches fell in a band from Hamilton to Hillsboro to Tyler, with Clifton and Itasca reporting 15 inches for the event. At least four inches fell south of a line through Abilene-Dublin-Corsicana-Longview, and north of a line through San Angelo-San Saba-Marlin-Jacksonville.

January 15-16, 1964

Another of the biggest events for north Texas. Accumulations above four inches were reported from stations east of a Muenster-Eastland-Goldthwaite line, and west of a Burnett-Temple-Mexia-Canton-Clarksville line. Between 8-12 inches were reported in a broad band from Hamilton to Granbury to McKinney. This was one the Dallas/Fort Worth area's biggest snowfalls.

[therock1811]

Another extreme example was the 1989 cold snap (or should I say freezer LOL). Coldest I've ever seen!

[PurdueWx80]

Mine would be Louisville's record storm back in 1994 (I think). That was the first time I remember seeing thundersnow. My dad and I drove around, and I remember not being able to see even a foot in front of the truck. I think we got about 14" out of that storm. Areas south of me (just S and SE of Louisville) got over 2' of snow, and we didn't have school for a week. This case ended up being a very famous case study showing mesoscale banding that can cause up to 2-4" per hour with thunder and lightning. Just after that a major polar air mass interacted with the deep snowcover to lower temperatures to -25F at our house. There is nothing like seeing frozen water vapor crystals float through the air.

A second runner up would be the January of 98, my first year at Purdue. Lafayette had between 12 and 18" from two storms, and it ended up getting as cold as 15 below zero. Some of it melted as it warmed up a few days later, so there were HUGE puddles everywhere, then it all froze as it got super cold again. I remember walking home from class, and I came across a pool of solid ice. As you can imagine, I didn't make it across without wiping out and busting my butt. The best part was that when I got up, I looked around, and NO ONE was there!

[Brent]

Blizzard of 1993. 13" in about 10-12 hours. I can barely remember it(I was only 4 1/2).

[deguy50]

1994 ice storm in Delaware while outside it looked crazy with all the ice and u could see transformers blowing up everywhere

[The Big Dog]

Being in South Florida, we don't get anything you yanks would consider "extreme."

Best I can do is Christmas Eve 1989. We had a severe freeze by Florida standards. Most of the tropical vegetation turned brown within a few days, lots of trees dead, leaves everywhere. I remember raking about six bags of leaves out of the back yard. Orange crop was nearly wiped out statewide. High in West Palm Beach that day was 41 -- coldest <b>ever</b> max temperature. Low was 28 -- one degree off the all-time record.

Next morning -- Christmas morning -- was bitterly cold. A few years ago, I was corresponding with someone on another weather board, and he swore he saw snow flurries at Lake Worth Rd. and US 441 that morning, which, as ludicrous as it sounds, would have marked a White Christmas for some in Palm Beach County. Yeah, it melted as soon as it hit the ground, but hey, we have to make out of it what we can. Needless to say, there was no Christmas Day barbecue at the house that year.

Yeah, that's pretty extreme.

[tronbunny]

Blizzard of '78. Mass. coast.
February, more than 28" of snow in less than 24hrs.
Cars buried on the highway, while moving!
Snowdrifts over home roofs, power off for days.
Had to ski to the store for basic supplies and school out for at least a week!

[Ixolib]

Driving from Biloxi to Washington, DC, on business in February 2003.

Made it as far north as Strasburg, VA when I-81 came to a complete standstill in 30" of snow-locked lanes - both north and south. Was stuck, dead-stopped on the highway, from 1pm in the afternoon until 4am the next morning (15 HOURS!!) in 13 degree temps and blowing/drifting snow. Thank goodness for my Jeep Liberty 4X4 - saved my butt after we got moving again!!

Being a good old boy from the MS Coast, I'd never before seen more than a flurry or two. And for this southern boy, that was more than enough winter excitement to last me a lifetime!! Think I'll stick with my hurricane threats.....

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/18/winter/main540920.shtml

[Wacahootaman]

I was out in Utah and Colorado when a Siberian Express came down from Siberia and Alaska. It was in February in the late 80s.

After the blizzard passed through, the Siberian Air settled in and the low temps were astounding. I drove across Utah where the lows were -25 at Green River,-35 at Hanksville, and -47 at Loa. Utah set its all time low temp that day with -60 somewhere.

What a gorgeous drive! Clear cold and sunny, with snow cover everywhere. I spent the nite in Cedar City in a motel that could not warm up because of the extreme cold(-22) Had to sleep in my sleeping bag inside the motel room!

When I got down to Las Vegas, the palm trees were dying. It had gotten down to 16 there.

[verycoolnin]

Let's see... the 1996 storm dropped 10' of snow and drifts up to 2 and maybe 3 feet. Later in that year we had record temperatures of close to 0 degrees with a 1/2in of freezing rain then 4' of snow. This is in SE VA BTW. In early January of 2002 we had another 10' of snow which was more than Green Bay had for the season at the time.

[x-y-no]

Blizzard of '78, definitely. I was hitchhiking down to where my parents were living in Princeton when I got caught in it. Fortunately, I was reasonably well equipped, so I set up my tent behind a billboard and rode it out. Something over 2 feet of snow before it was done, and it took a while before I could catch a ride the rest of the way.

[TexasStooge]

Nothing extreme here...yet, but then again, I live in Texas.

[Aquawind]

This was a nasty storm..Massive snowdrifts..

January 10th through the 12th, 1975 one of the worst blizzards on record had a strangle hold on the central and Northern Plains. The blizzard affected all of eastern South Dakota, North Dakota, Eastern Nebraska, northwest Iowa, and Minnesota and is often referred to as the "Blizzard of the Century" because of the duration, sustained high winds, and extreme cold.

Snow amounts of 6 inches to well over a foot accumulated and was blown into huge drifts. Sustained winds approached 45 miles an hour with gusts over 60 miles an hour. The temperatures were near thirty degrees at the start of the storm, but had fallen to 5 to 10 degrees below zero by the morning of January 11th, 1975. Wind chill temperatures were in the 50 to 70 degree below zero range. In some areas...visibilities were reduced to under 1/4 of a mile for over 24 hours, creating white-out conditions across the area. A broadcast tower nearly 2000 thousand feet tall collapsed during the storm with an estimated damage at 1.5 million dollars. Livestock losses in South Dakota alone were estimated at 10,000 to 15,000 head.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/fsd/archive/hisfsd1.htm


This one was the worst though..

1991 Halloween Blizzard

Across much of eastern Minnesota, trick-or-treaters donned snowmobile suits as snow began to fall during the afternoon of October 31, 1991. This marked the beginning of a major winter storm that pounded the eastern half of Minnesota over a three day period. The storm dropped 28.4 inches of snow on the Twin Cities, setting a single storm record for the metropolitan area. Duluth received 36.9 inches, the largest single storm total in Minnesota history. Southern Minnesota saw an ice storm especially around Albert Lea and Austin. Highway snow removal was hindered by extremely cold temperatures that followed the storm and transportation was hampered for many days.

http://www.climate.umn.edu/doc/journal/ ... rthree.htm

We got blasted with another 12+" in the Northern suburbs less than a week later..

This Cold Blast got me on the Florida Bandwagon...

The cold wave that hit the USA at the end of January 1996 was the worst for the north-central USA since February 1899 and the second worst since records began in 1896. The cold's brief duration kept it from being as disruptive as the bitter winters of 1976-77 and 1977-78 when long-lasting cold caused heating fuel shortages. In those years, the fuel shortages closed factories in many parts of the Midwest. Figures in the graphic here are averages of the coldest consecutive four days from Jan. 31 - Feb. 5 in each state this year and in 1899. The coldest days weren't the same in each state.

http://contact.usatoday.com/weather/wcoldmw.htm


A good bug kill does it for me now..