On this day, 15 years ago, a remarkable storm was brewing. On March 13, 1993, the storm only brought two inches of snow to Salisbury, Md. and three inches of snow to Dover, Del., but it brought hazardous conditions to several other areas.
Due to the jet stream being unusually south, low pressure from the Gulf of Mexico joined an artic high pressure system from the Great Plains. This storm grew into a monster, stretching all the way from Canada to Central America.
This storm goes by several names and it’s amazing how differently people may remember this storm. To me, I was in the 3rd grade, excited to have a week off from school to play in the snow and go sledding. I remember this storm as the Great Blizzard of 1993. Justin also remembers all of the snow and the week off from school, but he remembers it as the ‘93 Superstorm. A few other aliases this storm went by include: Storm of the Century, No-Name Hurricane and White Hurricane. So, while I was in New Jersey playing in the snow, people in Florida were dealing with the hurricane force winds, coastal flooding and 11 tornadoes that spawned from the storm.
The image gives you an idea of how big the storm is, however here are some numbers to put it into perspective. The storm’s total snowfall was computed to be 12.91 square miles. That would weight between 5.4 and 27 billion metric tons! Right to the north of Tampa storm surges reach 12 feet high! A sad fact, but it shows how dangerous the conditions became, more people were killed from drowning than in Hurricane Hugo and Hurricane Andrew combined.
Check back tomorrow for some more interesting facts about the Storm of the Century.
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