It's Raining Fish and Spiders (24 page)

Currier & Ives

But on the morning of Monday, March 12, commuters were caught off guard. A heavy whiteout type of snow fell all day long. Wind gusts were above hurricane strength at 80 mph. Snowdrifts piled above 20 feet. By afternoon, the city was smothered in a blanket of white. Power and telephone lines had fallen throughout the boroughs. Thousands of commuters were trapped in unheated elevated trains, and horse-drawn carriages were stuck in the drift-filled streets.

Digging out in Flushing, New York, after the Blizzard of 1888.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

A train wreck caused by the Blizzard of 1888.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

The New York Stock Exchange closed for the first time due to weather since it had opened in 1792. The ferries stopped running and Broadway theaters closed. More than two hundred ships were wrecked off New York Harbor that day.

The blizzard caused at least two hundred deaths in New York City. After the storm, frozen bodies were recovered from snowdrifts. Livery drivers froze to death in the cabs of their carriages. Horses died in harness. Two hundred more people died throughout the Northeast.

All this devastation did have a silver lining. The events of the blizzard led the city to begin burying telephone and electrical wiring, and to build an underground subway system that is currently the largest in the world.

However, true to the New York way of life, during that infamous blizzard, Daly's Theatre did not disappoint the few, intrepid theatergoers who battled 20-foot snowdrifts to get to that evening's performance of Shakespeare. What show was it? You guessed it!
A Midsummer Night's Dream
! As they say on Broadway, “The show must go on!”

The Storm of the Century
On March 7, 1993, I was working in the weather office at WABC-TV in New York City, getting ready for another day of TV and radio broadcasts, when I noticed what appeared to be a potentially significant storm developing over the American Southwest.

National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

Experience told me that this storm would likely blow through the Southeast and then turn up the East Coast—and that it would be messy. Boy, was it ever! This storm came to define extreme for a blizzard. Snowfall amounts averaged 2 feet—an average of 24 inches of snow fell onto most places from the southeastern United States, up the Eastern Seaboard to New England. From Maine to Georgia, snow and high winds buried the East Coast. Snow fell on nearly every inch of Alabama, a very rare occurrence. Seventeen inches alone fell in Birmingham, Alabama. This event, which lasted from March 12th to the 15th in the United States, came to be known as the Storm of the Century!

The storm was of biblical proportions. We had a reporter doing a live shot at a Long Island beach. As tropical storm–force winds of 55 mph blasted his face with snow, ice, and flying sand, he proclaimed, “All we need now is a plague of locusts!” Eighteen homes on Long Island were washed into the sea due to the pounding surf and many marinas were damaged or destroyed.

Half the states in the United States were affected in one way or another. In Florida, a 12-foot storm surge killed seven people, and a nasty outbreak of fifty tornadoes took eighteen lives. Three million people lost power, 270 people died on land, and 48 more were lost at sea. Powerful waves hammered the Northeast coast.

National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

As you can see, a blizzard can bring plenty of destruction as well as a lot of snow! The estimated cost of the cleanup was $6 billion.

Record amounts of snow fell on places that normally do not get a lot of snow. The Florida Panhandle received half a foot of snow. Chattanooga, Tennessee, which normally sees about 4 inches of snow in a season, got blanketed with 20 inches. The New York City area averaged 24 to 29 inches of snow. Powerful, howling winds blew out windows from skyscrapers, raining glass daggers onto those below.

Syracuse, New York, was pounded with 43 inches of snow. In Georgia, 1.3 million chickens died. Atlanta issued its first blizzard warning in history as the city received 9 inches of snow. Two hundred hikers had to be rescued by helicopter in the Great Smokey Mountains, where 4 feet of snow fell. Boston cancelled its St. Patrick's Day Parade for the first time ever. Winds were recorded in the Florida Keys at 109 mph…and the storm was just beginning! The winds at Mount Washington, New Hampshire, raced across the Presidential Range, gusting to 144 mph. The temperature in Burlington, Vermont, plunged to -12º F (-24.4°C). The record low pressure of the storm, 28.38 inches at White Plains, New York, was blamed for an unusually high number of childbirths!

The total amount of snow was huge! The normal ratio of rain to snow is that 1 inch of liquid makes 10 inches of snow. If the air mass is colder, then even more snow can result. After the Storm of the Century, the National Weather Service reported that if the amount of snow that fell had been rain, it would have been forty times the volume of water that flows out of the Mississippi River at New Orleans in one day! In another highlight, Mount Leconte in Tennessee received a whopping 56 inches of snow!

Can Somebody Toss Me a Shovel? I Gotta Get Outta Here!

I remember the storm vividly. New York City was smothered with 2 feet of snow. New Jersey had nearly 30 inches in Newark and Patterson. The snow piled high enough to cover the roofs of the cars that were unfortunately parked at curbside—cars that were buried even deeper when the snowplows came through. Many vehicles were left in place until the snow melted. I did a weather report standing on the top of a completely covered SUV. I dug out the top to show that the SUV was actually under there!

The Blizzard of 1996

Just three years later, another gigantic blizzard struck the East Coast. This was the second storm to have a huge impact on me, personally and professionally. I'll tell you about the first a little later.

It was Tuesday, January 2, 1996, and I was doing the weather live at 5
A.M
. in beautiful Prospect Park, Brooklyn. I was riding a 60-inch Flexible Flyer sled (the greatest sled ever built!) that had been lent to me by a good friend and colleague, Fred Chieco. Flying down the snow-covered hills of that beautiful place in the morning sun on live television was a delight—until I had to tell New Yorkers of an impending blizzard that was soon to blast not only New York City, but the entire tristate area, New England, and the whole East Coast!

The only problem with the forecast was that the storm wouldn't reach the area until Sunday. I admit, predicting a blizzard five days before it was due to hit was risky. But the computer models had been very good at forecasting winter storms that year and I felt confident in their information, so I went with my gut and went public with my prediction. Everyone thought I was crazy!

Snow started falling Saturday afternoon, January 6, and by the time it stopped snowing early on Monday, January 8, the storm was as devastating as the blizzard of 1993. The snow was heaviest in the Virginias, Washington, D.C., Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and throughout New England. Most of the snowfall records from the Storm of the Century were broken.

The cost in damage, lost sales, and decreased production was estimated at nearly $17 billion. The New York City school system was closed for snow on that Monday, January 8, for the first time in 20 years. Then mayor Rudy Giuliani declared that no cars could come into the city. You could leave with your car, but you could not come back. Snow packed the streets so tightly even buses and garbage trucks could not pass.

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 dead. 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.