New Year’s Eve Snowstorms

Although there was a lot of chatter earlier this week about a possible blizzard for New Year’s Eve this year, including in New York City, the most potent part of the eastern storm will not occur until Friday and Saturday–and will be limited to New England.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t talk about New Year’s Eve snowstorms, though…

New Year’s Eve 1963

The storm pictured above brought as much as a foot and a half of snow to southern parts of the United States, including Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. Even New Orleans had nearly 5 inches of snow. There must have been quite a few snowball fights on Bourbon Street.

Chicago in 1978

Heavy snow and a strong wind resulted in major travel problems for revelers in Chicago on New Year’s Eve in 1978; the national weather services lists the snowfall for the date being 7.8 inches, which is a record for the date. I imagine that more snow than that fell overnight, based on the image in this blog (Chicago Sidewalk After the New Year’s Eve Blizzard of 1978), but I don’t have the statistics for that.

Speaking of Chicago

This New Year’s Eve is the 21st anniversary of the famous Fog Bowl in Chicago, something that I wrote about in Weather Whys.

–Paul Yeager