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Today is the 75th anniversary of Black/Dark Sunday. Here is a story from the front page of the Pittsburgh Press on Monday, September 25, 1950:

Euro all of a sudden really into rain late Saturday into Sunday.

Getting a pretty good soaking by under the beam sheet drizzle now.

I begrudgingly gave you a like lol

This was a bad time to be alive, I think London had a similar instance of air pollution, but there thousands of people died (there was some sort of inversion that caused the poisonous chemicals to remain near the ground and spread via a mysterious yellow fog.)

This was our best storm in YEARS, notice how JFK had over 6 inches of snow too we have a Central NJ kind of climate here lol

Yeah, I suspect haze and smoke from human-caused pollution also contributed to the darkness. In those days, it wasn't unheard of to have local spells of pollution pretty much block out the sky on their own. Here's another site from 25 years ago, with witness experiences in the comments: darksunday Looking at the area that was darkest, maybe a combination of wildfire smoke, industrial pollution, and lake effect clouds with the record cold air passing over the Lakes on the northwest flow.

Are you sure?

FWIW Norton is watching it: Then early next week will have to monitor the tropics as GFS and ECMWF show a potential tropical system approaching from the south, although GEFS and EPS ensembles keep it well to the south through Tue.

This was a narrow band of heavy snow. It lead to a normal winter for here while most had a well below average winter. Shows how snow averages can vary widely for parts of areas by decade.

Oh that's a good point maybe air pollution from industrial smoke stacks in PA also had an influence.

Was this another PD snowstorm that doesn't get talked about much? By the way, I remembered another storm like that, I think it was in January 2022? The one that gave Brooklyn and Queens and points east a foot or more of snow. The wind mostly blew the snow away so I didn't need to shovel at all.

Yes, that's correct. I fixed it..

It looks MUCH worse than what we went through a few years ago. Are we sure it wasn't smoke from some mushroom cloud of nuclear testing going on somewhere?

Hey Don! I think the second chart should be for La Niña and not neutral-cool.

The preponderance of guidance had it either as a tropical depression or tropical storm. Intensity forecasts this far out aren't very accurate.

Got a nice storm last night, looked like the heaviest of the system at the time went through here? That's not common nowadays. I don't know how much, though, sorry, because I live in an apartment, so I don't have a rain gauge. Raindrop.farm (if that's reliable?) says 0.61. Hoping for more! The humidity is so awful, though, I couldn't sleep well last night.

Ah yes my favorite event of that year I think LGA had like 40:1 ratios in the 2004 event.

Interesting news stories from 1950 lol, I take it the Korean war was ongoing?

Even 49/40 at Pittsburgh! Are we sure wildfires in Western Canada caused all this? It looks like night time in the middle of the day....

Well, I think it was wildfire smoke, but it wasn't without some questions. Sounds like the thought of wildfire smoke from Canada causing such an obstruction to the sky was just unthinkable in 1950, if they had only been around these days, it's no big deal anymore.

Feb 16-17 2024, the foot of snow we got here was like that. Ratios were 20 to 30:1

If not wildfire smoke then what would it be?

They claim the smoke was at 15,000 to 20,000 above the ground, so probably minimal impact. But the AQI would have been horrible back then just from industry most likely.