It’s hard to believe that it’s been 17 years since the Blizzard of ’93. I was a kid (10 years old) in Pittsburgh at the time and can remember making snow tunnels and going out with my dad as he plowed driveways. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal, even though we were off school for a while because of it.
Enter 2010. We have a snowstorm on February 5th and 6th that drops 24-36 inches of snow across parts of our region. Now, I’m driving and have a job. I have to shovel all of the snow off of my driveway.
Now I understand the big deal!
The Blizzard of ’93 happened on March 12-14 (give or take) and dropped a lot of snow with blowing winds across record-cold temperatures. It also caused many deaths up and down the east coast.
Here are a couple of facts from a paper I found on the NOAA website. I’ll link to the paper, too, just in case you want to read it. Click here.
- The National Weather Service’s Office of Hydrology estimated the volume of water that fell as snow as 44 million acre-feet. This is comparable to 40 days’ flow on the Mississippi River at New Orleans.
Snowfall totals included:
56 inches on Mount LeConte, TN
50 inches on Mount Mitchell, NC (14-foot drifts)
44 inches in Snowshoe, WV
43 inches in Syracuse, NY
36 inches in Latrobe, PA (10-foot drifts)
30 inches in Beckley, WV
27 inches in Albany, NY
25 inches in Pittsburgh, PA
- For the first time, every major airport on the east coast was closed at one time or another by the storm.
The preliminary death toll for the U.S. is approximately 270, and 48 people were reported as missing at sea (Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic, including Canadian waters).
Pennsylvania 49
West Virginia 4
Maryland 3
Florida 44
New York 23
South Carolina 1
Alabama 16
Georgia 15
Tennessee 14
North Carolina 19
Kentucky 5
Virginia 13
Maine 2
Record low temperatures included (some records for March):
-12 degrees in Burlington, VT and Caribou, ME
-11 degrees in Syracuse, NY
-10 degrees on Mount LeConte, TN
-5 degrees in Elkins, WV
-4 degrees in Waynesville, NC and Rochester, NY
1 degree in Pittsburgh, PA
2 degrees in Asheville, NC and Birmingham, AL
So, I think it’s a safe bet to say that the Blizzard of ’93 was worse than the Blizzard of 2010. What do you think?
Filed in: 
Comments: 
Share:
Tim,
March 13, 1993: Storm of the Century, also my Sweet 16. Here in Meyersdale my family and I were spending March 12th planning the final portions of my party, Rented Hall, DJ’d Dance and a Great Guest List… Until we woke up to the five feet of snow and the first ever Postponed Maple Queens Contest! Of course we postponed the party, had to call all the guests, the DJ and the Hall to see if we could still get them the following week…
March 13, 2010: Actually Much to old for Birthday Parties, but I seriously feel that you should only have one natural disaster on your birthday in your lifetime…
Still living in Meyersdale and in an area the locals refer to as “THE BOTTOM” Spending the night with my parents and praying my single-wide mobile home does not float off to Confluence…
Personally, I find this years disaster to be worse than the one in 1993!
Jessica… sorry to hear about you natural disaster-prone birthday. I hope it ends up working out for you. Good luck!