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Major Winter Storms of the Southeast's past


NCummingWx93

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Fire away! Post em! Since the 1970s, we've definitely had our fair share of winter events, some major to extreme. If you have maps, observations, pictures, commentary etc... this is the place to post them. In this down (boring) time, we definitely need this to keep us entertained and enthusiastic about what will hopefully be a winter to build upon these memories with a strong Nino and -NAO!

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March 1980 is the benchmark here, officially 16" but that's just plain wrong, it was no less than 24", I remember dad not being able to find anywhere less than 20-24" on the yardstick and drifts were 5-7 ft high everywhere. Will most likely never see that again......1989 was a good year we had a big one late in Feb with maybe a foot and then again another foot and white Xmas in Dec. of 1989.

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March 1980 is the benchmark here, officially 16" but that's just plain wrong, it was no less than 24", I remember dad not being able to find anywhere less than 20-24" on the yardstick and drifts were 5-7 ft high everywhere. Will most likely never see that again......1989 was a good year we had a big one late in Feb with maybe a foot and then again another foot and white Xmas in Dec. of 1989.

   Yep, March 2nd 1980 was good out this way too. Coldest temps I have ever seen here with snow. At the height of the storm the temp was 9 degrees above zero with heavy snow. Hovered around 10 degrees all day with 35-40 mph winds. Measured 8-10 inches when all was said and done. I was 15 years old and remember it like it was yesterday..

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For my area, I think the January 30, 2010 storm was the best snow of the past decade. My area got about 6 inches of snow and sleet and it stuck around for several days. I seem to recall piles in parking lots remaining until the last week of February. However, we got about 1 inch of evening snow before it temporarily stopped, so for a while I was concerned that that was all we would get. I was in middle school at the time, and I remember seeing the probability of snow go up each day in the newspaper more than any specific numeric forecasts.

 

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~nwsfo/storage/cases/20100129/

 

The last two weeks of February 2015 were pretty impressive here as well. While we failed to get any major snowstorms, the fact that we had 16 days of patchy snow cover or better was pretty impressive. We had five wintry precip events during those 16 days (though one was mostly sleet and one was freezing rain turning to rain). Also, two of the snows, on February 18 and February 24, were surprise events. The only downside to those two weeks was that 2 inches February 25-26 storm melted or got stuck in the trees, so 6 inches of snow only produced 3-4 inches of ground accumulation.

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I'm surprised nobody has mentioned probably the greatest snowstorm the southeast has experienced in our lifetime. The Great blizzard of 1993. I doubt we will ever see anything like that again.

 

Also, the January 1992 snowstorm. Back to back winters of 6" + here which is unheard of for this area.

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I'm surprised nobody has mentioned probably the greatest snowstorm the southeast has experienced in our lifetime. The Great blizzard of 1993. I doubt we will ever see anything like that again.

 

Also, the January 1992 snowstorm. Back to back winters of 6" + here which is unheard of for this area.

 

That was really only good for most of far western NC/SC and then SW from there into AL/GA etc ....I bet 75% of the people that post in this forum got little to no snow from it so that's why your seeing a lot of March 1980, Jan 1988 type post.....March 93 for us was a wild day though temps in the 60's-low 70's during the morning and afternoon with wind gust to 60-70 mph then by midnight we had a  trace of mushy snow after the storm got north of us and the backside cold came in...I bet it  went from 70 to 30 in a few hrs.....

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I think it's all locale-dependent.

 

I can remember several (what we considered) major winter storms on the Outer Banks in the 70's and 80's. Most of them were Nor'easter related wrap-around snows. Several of us were snowed in due to drifts up against our doors. Many vacation cottages (the first 'beach boxes') lost sheetrock ceilings from snow blowing into the vents on houses, or pipes bursting. We has 2 back-to-back storms in 1980 of 20" and 14" 6 days apart in my part of Kill Devil Hills. Christmas Church services were canceled in 1989 due to a coastal blizzard.

 

The late 70's- mid 80's had a barage of coastal storms that, while not providing snow or ice, were a constant erosion problem, that led to the demise of numerous oceanfront cottages and motels. At the same time, the Outer Banks, with it's Gulf Stream proximity, escaped many of the brutal snows y'all may have had inland. Our severe winter storms weren't always based on how much snow we had - but rather on how long roads were under water, or how long power was out, or how many house were condemned for structural damage.

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My favorite, even over Jan 2000 is Jan 2002.    Long duration event, started late afternoon and kept going all the following day.   Great ULL/cut off with a perfect track, last true great winter storm for RDU.

 

This one is in my top three favorites, I got around half a foot from this storm. The thing I remembered the most was making these mini snowmen in my backyard and they were still there (along with a few patches of snow in the grass) for about 2 weeks. I can only remember about one other storm since where we had snow linger around for a similar amount of time (January 9-10, 2011) so that just shows how rare and notable this storm was.

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In the past 15 years...

I'd probably say January 23rd is my benchmark for Gastonia and Shelby. February 2004 and March 2009 is also in the running along with February 2014. Overall since I've been alive? Its January 1988 and it isn't that close.

 

January 1998 was great, I got about a foot in NE CLT.  Plus I was in 6th grade and was out of school for a week! Good times.  February 2004 though is still the best I can remember for MBY in CLT.  14 inches, all snow, below freezing the entire time for about a 24 hour period including daylight snow.  Just the best storm. 

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March 1980 is the benchmark here, officially 16" but that's just plain wrong, it was no less than 24", I remember dad not being able to find anywhere less than 20-24" on the yardstick and drifts were 5-7 ft high everywhere. Will most likely never see that again......1989 was a good year we had a big one late in Feb with maybe a foot and then again another foot and white Xmas in Dec. of 1989.

I lived in Virginia Beach then and we got about 17" with 6 foot drifts. We were out of school for a week. It was awesome. I would love to see a storm like that again but were I live now.

 

The 1993 storm was amazing just because of the temp rise and drop on the same day and the strong winds. We ended up with about 2 inches of snow from that one.

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I'm surprised nobody has mentioned probably the greatest snowstorm the southeast has experienced in our lifetime. The Great blizzard of 1993. I doubt we will ever see anything like that again.

 

Also, the January 1992 snowstorm. Back to back winters of 6" + here which is unheard of for this area.

No doubt '93 is #1 on my list. Check out this video of James Spann covering the storm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0PMaTTyWXs

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This topic has made me do some thinking about storms in my past  most of which were not in the SE.

 

West Milford, NJ, late 50s through 1965.  West Milford often leads the state in snow totals.  I remember many storms that began in the late afternoon and continued overnight. There were several that when I looked out the next morning the mailboxes looked like they were sitting directly on the snow. Several times we actually ice skated on top of deep snow after a light rain was followed by a hard freeze.  It was fun until you hit a soft spot on the way down a hill.   :) Ah hell.  It was still fun.

 

Late December 1969. Driving from Vienna to Innsbruck, Austria.  Ran into a driving snowstorm in the Alps. After dark I could barely see 50 feet.  I probably got my storm chasing passion from that day and night.

 

Virginia mountains 75-80.  Winter of 77.  Went to school one day in Jan.  What a winter.  Also got the most snow I've ever gotten at one time the last week of April a year or two later.  That was the one where when the school called the Roanoke NWS office we were told it couldn't be snowing because it was too warm.

 

I've spent a total of 7 winters in Boone.  Saw some good snows, but it is the wind that stands out in my memories of Boone.

 

In the Triad the last 35 years.  Big storms are few and far between.  Just that monster snow in 2004 and several ice storms stand out in my mind.  I need to move if I want to relive some winter memories for real.  

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Although only affecting the northeastern mountains of NC, the Blizzard of 1996 was memorable for me because a few friends and myself rented out a cabin in the mountains of Va for the weekend. When we left home, they were predicting 6 to 10 inches for us. Saturday only saw a few inches fall. By Sunday morning there was over a foot on the ground and the wind was blowing at 30 to 40mph. The temp hovered around 5 degrees the entire time we were there. We were stuck. The cabin was remote and had no electricity. it was over 3 miles to the nearest paved road. We had to wait until Tuesday before we were finally able to hike out. About 3 feet fell with drifts over 6 feet. It took us 4 hours to hike out. It was another 2 weeks before we got our vehicles back.

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Hickory:

 

Jan 30 96 icestorm (still the benchmark ice/snowstorm combo for hickory IMO)

Jan 96 blizzard

Mar 93 blizzard

Christmas storm 2010 (hard to beat 9 inches of snow on christmas day)

Jan 23 2003

Dec 2009 snowstorm

Dec 2002 icestorm

 

 

Haven't really experienced anything in Raleigh yet to write home about. The snowstorm this year in either late feb/early march wasn't bad ( can't remember the date). Also the sleet storm. The past winter was very underrated in Raleigh if you think about it.

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