In late November 1950, 75 years ago this week, what became known as the Great Appalachian Storm hammered not just the Appalachians, but also the Ohio Valley, Great Lakes and Northeast with a combination of heavy snow, high winds, coastal flooding and extreme cold.
Over 2 feet of snow was dumped over a wide swath of eastern Ohio, West Virginia, western Pennsylvania and extreme southwest New York. Among the incredible totals were Coburn Creek, West Virginia (63.2 inches), still a state snowstorm record; Steubenville, Ohio (44 inches); and Pittsburgh (30.5 inches).
Given the extremity of the heavy snowfall and its areal extent, NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information ranked this asthe most extreme winter storm on record for the Ohio Valley.
Its damaging winds were no less incredible, with gusts to 94 mph at what is now JFK Airport and 110 mph at Concord, New Hampshire. These high winds led to coastal flooding from New Jersey to New England, includingNew York's LaGuardia Airport.
The storm then dragged record-smashing cold air southward, with temperatures as cold as minus 8 degrees in Allardt, South Carolina, and 2 degrees in Booneville, Mississippi, weather historian Christopher Burt wrote in acomprehensive history of the stormon Weather Underground.
At least 160 deaths were attributed to the storm, with damage of $66.7 million, the costliest weather event for American insurers at the time. In their book "Northeast Snowstorms," Paul Kocin and Louis Uccellini wrote, "We feel that this storm is the benchmark against which all other major storms of the 20th century could be compared."
On a personal note, my all-time favorite bizarre weather map came from this storm.
The Great Appalachian Storm was so intense and wound up, it turned basic meteorology in the Northern Hemisphere on its head.
At the time of the surface map shown below, Nov. 26, 1950, cold air was blowing in from thesouthover much of the interior Northeast. Conversely, north winds were usheringwarmerair into the Ohio Valley from the northern Great Lakes. Temperatures were in the low 40s in Montreal, Canada, as single-digit cold gripped parts of Pennsylvania and West Virginia with southerly winds.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him onBluesky,X (formerly Twitter)andFacebook.