I’ve posted before about the Anchorage earthquake of 1964 being the most powerful recorded in North America. We also lived in Anchorage in 2002, when there was a record 24-hour snowfall of 29.6" in 24 hours on St. Patrick’s Day. We went out show-shoeing the next day, as I couldn’t get my Jeep out of the garage.
How about y’all?
I lived near Pittsburgh during this storm which was a real doozy for the local area. About 26 inches of snow fell.
I was driving and could not see the roads or even the stop lights. It was a miracle I made it home in one piece only to get stuck in my driveway for a couple days.
We lived in suburban Boston during the Blizzard of '78. School was cancelled for a week and we cross country skied to the store. Fortunately my dad was able to leave work before things got bad or he would have had a tough time getting home.
Not sure if any record was set, but there were blizzards when I was at Purdue in '77 and '78 with windchills of -80° and they actually canceled classes for 2 days!
Certainly no world record like the ‘64 quake you mention. Was the 24-hr snow a world record, state, or local?
Around Chicago, the standard is likely the 67 blizzard. 1967 Chicago blizzard - Wikipedia
But I’m sure plenty of places regularly see greater snowfalls.
I assume you aren’t asking about things like, “the highest temp on this date or the most rain for a month/season/year for this particular location.”
Denver October 97 blizzard… the one that shut down DIA for the first of many times. , got 38” in the part of Elbert county that I lived in. Austin for the Feb 2021 freeze/ blackout, and the repeat one of 2023.
I was about 45 minutes away from Montague, NY (77" of snowfall in 24hrs – 5pp PDF) in January '97. I had to drive up and see it.
I climbed up onto the roof of my Nissan Pathfinder. The plows had piled the roadside snow higher than my 6+ foot tall frame could see from the roof of my car. No houses were visible.
Skied in that area a few days later. Crappy hill, but good snow, and plenty of it!
They were still talking about that when I was stationed in South Weymouth in '84.
Just local.
The great Seattle snow storm January 15 thru January 28 1943. School and all of the roads were closed. Everybody brought out sleds and toboggans and we just ran them down the street.
I can’t easily find actual historical records, but in summer 2020 during the Holiday Farm Fire, on a scale where 150 was unhealthy, and the scale only went to 240, which was high hazardous, it was over 600 for many days. Yes, it gunked up our house HVAC with the charmingly named “elephant snot,” and yes, it was extremely hot, and yes, it was at night, and yes, this meant an emergency visit from a non-mask-wearing tech before there was any treatment but Remdesivir. Fun stuff.
I - along with many Dopers I’m sure - was part of the Northeast Blackout of 2023. I guess it was record-setting for the US and Canada - worse than the Northeast Blackout of 1965.
I was living in suburban Chicago during the record-breaking heat wave in July of 1995. Temperatures topped out at 106F on July 13 (the second-highest temperature ever recorded in Chicago), and over 700 people, mostly in poorer neighborhoods in the city, died due to heat-related health crises.
My sister-in-law got married on July 15th, when the high was 99F, in a church which did not have air conditioning. It was brutal. My wife and I were living in a small apartment, and even with our window AC running constantly, the temperature in the apartment was in the upper 80s during that week.
I remember a heat wave when a lot of people died, but I sure don’t remember a summer in the mid-90s when my kids were small as being all that out of line with any average Chicago summer. I’d be curious to see how that heat stretch compared to whatever was the warmest stretch here this past summer. Seems like there was a period of at least a couple weeks when temps were in the high 80s-90s and didn’t cool off at night.
I freely admit that I’m pretty horrible about remembering past weather - extreme or not. I’m always lost when folk say something like, “Remember that really cold snap 3 Februarys ago?” Or they toss around words like “polar vortex.” Heck, the unusual thing is when we DON’T get a really cold snap in winter.
The only reason I’ll remember weather as unusual is if I had something unusual happening at the same time - like a wedding, or a new baby, new job, Superbowl party…
I remember the rain and flooding in DuPage in August 87 as pretty extreme. But, IIRC, there was some pretty extreme rain/flooding just a couple of years later.
I was back home for Christmas in my hometown of Kingsville for the record breaking White Christmas snow of 2004. The official reading at the Corpus Christi airport was 4.4 inches over a 24 hour period starting on Christmas Eve and stretching out into early Christmas Day, which broke the previous record from 1895. Seeing snow covered palm trees is a sight I’ll never forget.
I live about 6 miles north of Hokah, MN which set the Minnesota 24 hour rainfall record (15.10")
(storm total was 16.27")
Brian
I mentioned in the other thread that I lived near Charlotte during Hurricane Hugo. According to Wikipedia, it was the costliest hurricane in US history at the time.
I now live in the Sacramento area, and was here during the heat wave of September 2022. Sacramento recorded an all time record high temperature of 116 °F. And my air conditioner broke.
I lived 5 miles from the epicenter of the Northridge earthquake, the largest earthquake ever recorded in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Magnitude 6.7.
I was living IN Boston during the Blizzard. EVERYTHING was cancelled for a week. The next week, I took my driver’s test on roads barely passable. (The officer told me, don’t even try the parallel parking).
But my dad had me beat. He lived in Boston during the Great Molasses Flood.
Yes, I was one of those affected. I was living in southern Ontario at the time. Believe it or not, I was actually surfing the SDMB when the lights went out.
They didn’t come back on for about 30 hours in my location. We managed to get through, though I was starting to get tired of cold sandwiches, warm beer, and Scrabble by candlelight.
I was living in Pennsylvania when Tropical Storm Agnes laid waste to the central part of the state in 1972. It was certainly record-setting for us. Very few people were untouched by the flood.