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SACRUS

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    January 2026 OBS and Discussion

    in New York City Metro

    Posted

    24 minutes ago, Roger Smith said:

    In 1920 a strong arctic high settled over the region on Jan 31-Feb 1. Temperatures fell below zero overnight setting records, but both days had highs in the low 20s, probably midnight highs at both ends of the cold spell. Then a coastal moved slowly north and Feb 3-5 all had over 1" of liquid and over 5" of snow each day. I would imagine the mix was similar to the current storm except that it lasted longer. I've seen one old archived photo of horse-drawn carts and old-fashioned cars semi-stuck in a goopy looking mess but I wonder if there are other news reports from that series of events. The storm brought a very cold two weeks to a close and transitioned to a more average sort of pattern in Feb 1920. 

    Another historical note, today's NYC record of 10.0" from 1905 was part of a two-day total of 11.0" and that storm was also a coastal low. 

    Going back 48 years, residents of the Great Lakes region were told by forecasters to expect a big snowfall the next day, but the models of the time showed a deep low tracking from Alabama to Lake Ontario; nobody was quite prepared for the Cleveland superbomb result (955 mb at Port Huron-Sarnia with low moving due north into Lake Huron). At London ON, winds gusted to 80 mph from the south but it was an arctic wraparound! Temps had dropped from near 40F overnight to 20 F. The storm dropped 15-30" of wind-blown snow over most of Ohio, Michigan and southwest to northeast ON. Toronto had much less snow (about 4" on a SSW wind of 40-60 mph) and saw temperatures drop 15 F deg in two hours from 8 to 10 a.m. on the 26th. I was actually in a weather office plotting maps during this storm, to support air quality forecasts made by the company. My parking spot (in northwest Toronto) was occupied by the housing for the building's air conditioning unit, luckily for me it arrived a few minutes before I did that morning. Jan 26 is a date for huge Great Lakes storms, there was the Chicago blizzard of 1967 and a monster lake effect storm in 1971 that trapped hundreds of people in central Ontario for up to a week. During the 1967 storm, both Toronto and NYC had record highs on Jan 25 but in Ontario the warmth was followed by a sleet and snow storm lasting two days; eventually we went from 60 degrees F to 10 inches of frozen snow on the ground. It then stayed very cold for about six weeks. 

     

     

    https://glenallenweather.com/historylinks/1967/ChicagoBlizzard of 1967.pdf

     

     

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