A LOOK BACK: Super Arctic Outbreak January 1985

Written by on December 6, 2015 in Autumn 2015, United States of America, Winter 2015/16 with 0 Comments

Every weekend in the run up to New Year, I thought it might be good to take a step back in time and relive some of America and Europe’s very worst, most extreme winters of the last 100+ years.

Thought I would start off with 1985 for the US which saw a record mild December in the East!

January 1985 Record-breaking Cold

One of the most intense arctic outbreaks of the 20th century occurred January 18-22, 1985.  Extremely cold temperatures affected every state east of the Rockies with three new state record lows established: -34° at Mt. Mitchell, North Carolina, -19° at Caesar’s Head, South Carolina; and -30° at Mountain Lake, Virginia.  According to newspaper reports at least 165 fatalities were attributed to the weather.  The inauguration parade for President Reagan’s second term was canceled with wind chills in Washington DC colder than -10° F.  Florida’s Secretary of Agriculture termed this the “freeze of the century” with the state’s citrus industry suffering $2.5 billion in losses.

A higher-resolution version of this map is available by clicking the image

Arctic air was pushed southward into the northern Plains and Great Lakes on January 18th by a building ridge of high pressure over northern Canada.  The upper level high became unusually strong over Canada, diverting the jet stream on a looping path southward across the United States.  The polar vortex dropped into the Great Lakes region on January 19th; this helped accelerate the movement of intensely cold air southward.  The arctic cold front reached the Carolinas during the morning of January 20th and by that evening had pushed through all of Florida and into Cuba.  Across North and South Carolina the coldest morning of the event was January 21, 1985, a date which shows up in most city’s record books for the lowest temperatures ever observed.

North American Regional Reanalysis maps from PSU for the period January 18-21, 1985.  The top-left panel is 500 mb heights and vorticity; top-right panel is surface pressure and fronts with 1000-500 mb thickness; bottom-left panel is 700 mb heights and RH; bottom-right panel is 850 mb heights, temperatures, and RH.

Local impacts from the exceptionally cold weather included record-high electricity usage which exceeded the previous record by 12 percent, burst water pipes in municipal buildings, homes and businesses, and at least one fatality in the town of Teachey, NC due to exposure to the cold temperatures.  There were many house fires around the region due to improper use of space heaters.  Firefighters faced the unusual problem of their water hoses freezing while attempting to fight fires.  Some local school systems operated on delayed schedules while others canceled classes entirely until the weather warmed.  The fishing vessel Miss Radford sank in the Pamlico Sound during frigid winds; the three crew members were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard.  In Wilmington the temperature fell to 5 degrees on the morning of January 21, 1985; this tied the all-time record low for Wilmington orginally established on February 13, 1899.  The Christmas Snowstorm of 1989 just four years later dropped the temperature to 0 which set a new all-time record low for the Port City.

 

All-time State Low Temperature Records set on January 21, 1985
North Carolina:  Mount Mitchell -34°
South Carolina:  Caesar’s Head -19°
Virginia:  Mountain Lake -30°

 

All-time Station Low Temperature Records set on January 21, 1985
Grandfather Mountain, NC -32° Hamlet, NC -6°
Boone, NC -24° Lincolnton, NC -6°
Waynesville, NC -22° Charlotte, NC -5°
Asheville, NC -17° Gastonia, NC -5°
Franklin, NC -15° Greenville, NC -4°
Hendersonville, NC -14° Laurinburg, NC -3°
Raleigh, NC -9° Kinston, NC -2°
Hickory, NC -8° Manteo, NC -2°
Asheboro, NC -8° Fayetteville/Pope AFB, NC -1°
Rocky Mount, NC -8° Morehead City, NC
Greensboro, NC -8° Hatteras, NC
McColl, SC -5° Lake City, SC
Darlington, SC -4° Andrews, SC
Columbia, SC -1° Beaufort, SC
Dillon, SC -1° Charleston, SC
Florence, SC Myrtle Beach, SC
Sumter, SC Edisto Island, SC

 

12185map

Account from Newport/Moorehead City NWS.

January 21, 1985 – Coldest Day This Century in Eastern North Carolina
Event Overview – The January 1985 Arctic outbreak was the result of the shifting of the polar vortex further south than is normally seen. Blocked from its normal movement, polar air from the north pushed into nearly every section of the eastern half of the United States, shattering record lows in a number of states. The effects of the outbreak were damaging. At least 126 deaths were blamed on the cold snap and 90 percent of the citrus crop in Florida was destroyed in what the state called the “Freeze of the Century.” Florida’s citrus industry suffered $1.2 billion in losses ($2.3 billion in 2009 dollars) as a result of the inclement weather. The public inauguration of President Ronald Reagan for his second term was held in the Capitol Rotunda instead of outside due to the cold weather, canceling the inaugural parade in the process. (Because Inauguration Day fell on a Sunday, Reagan took a private oath on January 20 and the semi-public oath on January 21.)

Temperatures in many locations of Eastern North Carolina fell to below zero for the only time this century (Figure 1). Numerous all-time record lows were set across the state of North Carolina including the state record of -34F at Mount Mitchell. Other all-time records lows set on the morning of January 21, 1985 included, -24F at Boone, -17F at Asheville, -5F at Charlotte and -7F at the Raleigh/Durham International Airport.

Figure 1. Map depicting low temperatures on the morning of Monday January 21, 1985. (Courtesy Belkys Melendez)

Selected Minimum Temperatures from Monday January 21, 1985

New Bern 1 F
Morehead City 1 F
Cape Hatteras 6 F
Greenville -4 F
Plymouth -5 F
Aurora -1 F
Bayboro -1 F
Kinston -2 F

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Synoptic Overview –

From Sunday, January 20 to Tuesday, January 22, 1985, a polar vortex, coupled with a large ridge of high pressure, moved polar air into the United States as far south as Florida. The frigid air mass moved east and south from the Plains during the day on January 20 with the surface map showing a massive 1048 mb high over the northern Plains at 12Z January 20 (Figure 2), resulting in frigid air for most of the central and eastern United States. The 500 mb pattern on January 20 (Figure 2), showed a closed polar vortex over Michigan. By the morning of January 21, the 500 mb vortex had moved to extreme Northern New England (Figure 3) producing the coldest morning of the century for many locations in the Southeastern United States, including eastern North Carolina.

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Figure 2. Surface Map at 12Z January 20, 1985 showing 1048 mb Arctic High covering most of the central U.S.

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Figure 3. The 12Z 500 mb Analysis January 20, 1985 showed closed polar vortex over Michigan.

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Figure 4. The 12Z 500 mb Analysis January 21, 1985 showed the polar vortex had moved to northern Maine.

Sources

Wikipedia

NCEP Reanalysis Page

National Weather Service Daily Weather Maps

From Wikipedia.

Winter 1985 cold wave

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A map of the United States detailing the record low temperatures for various cities on January 21, 1985.

The Winter 1985 cold wave[1] was a meteorological event, the result of the shifting of the polar vortex further south than is normally seen.[1] Blocked from its normal movement, polar air from the north pushed into nearly every section of the eastern half of the United States and Canada, shattering record lows in a number of areas.[1] The event was preceded by unusually warm weather in the eastern U.S. in December 1984, suggesting that there was a build-up of cold air that was suddenly released from the Arctic, a meteorological event known as a Mobile Polar High, a weather process identified by Professor Marcel Leroux.[2]

Meteorological synopsis[edit]

From Sunday, January 20, to Tuesday, January 22, 1985, the polar vortex, coupled with a large ridge of high pressure, moved polar air into the United States as far south as Florida.[1] Unlike most cold air systems, a pattern of self-modification did not immediately occur, i.e. seasonable temperatures were absent for a number of days, a rarity in forecasting.[1]

The Arctic air mass started moving into the United States on the evening of January 19 and the morning of January 20. An early victim of the air mass was the city of Chicago, which recorded a record low of −27 °F (−33 °C), coupled with 25 miles per hour (40 km/h) winds to produce a wind chill of −77 °F (−61 °C), also never recorded before. The wind chill calculation was adjusted in 2001, which would make the value about −60 °F (−51 °C) on the new scale.[3] St. Louis saw a low of −18 °F (−28 °C). Pittsburgh woke up that morning to find a low of −18 °F (−28 °C), the coldest morning since 1899.[4] In Cincinnati, the morning temperature of −21 °F (−29 °C) tied for the fourth-lowest minimum temperature in the city’s history, outdone by a cold mass the year before and a blizzard in 1977.[5] Cleveland fell to −18 °F (−28 °C), which was at the time a record.[6] Memphis recorded a low of −4 °F (−20 °C), setting a record low for that day. The coldest temperature in the contiguous states on Jan. 21 was −24 °F (−31 °C), in the unlikely location of Akron, Ohio.[7]

The mass moved east and south during the day on January 20, resulting in frigid air for most of the Eastern Seaboard starting on the morning of January 21. New York City‘s Central Park recorded a low of −2 °F (−19 °C), breaking that date’s record.[8] Washington National Airport set a record of −4 °F (−20 °C) for the morning of January 21 and a record low for the prior date of −2 °F (−19 °C).[9] It was the Southern United States that felt the biggest brunt, unaccustomed as they are to the Northern states’ winter air. Roanoke, Virginia set a record low of −11 °F (−24 °C), and the campus of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Tennessee, recorded a record low of −24 °F (−31 °C).[1] Tennessee’s state capital, Nashville, dropped to −17 °F (−27 °C), while all-time records were set well into interior sections of the deep South, such as −5 °F (−21 °C) in Charlotte,[1] −6 °F (−21 °C) in Macon, Georgia,[1] 7 °F (−14 °C) in Jacksonville, Florida,[1] and 10 °F (−12 °C) in Gainesville, Florida[10] (coldest since 6 °F (−14 °C) in 1899). Atlanta saw a low of −8 °F (−22 °C), setting a record for the month of January and for the 20th century, missing by just one degree the all-time record (since 1879) set in February 1899.[11] Even Miami, whose average low in late January is 60 °F (16 °C), recorded a low of 34 °F (1 °C) on the 21st and 30 °F (−1 °C) on the 22nd, both record lows for the date, the latter being one of only 10 times the city has been that cold since 1895.[12][13]

Ferocious cold in February 1985 set two more state record lows in the Mountain West. Utah’s −69 °F (−56 °C) was the second-coldest temperature ever recorded in the “lower 48” states, just above Montana’s record of −70 °F (−57 °C) in 1954. Colorado’s −61 °F (−52 °C) broke the old record of −60 °F (−51 °C), also on February 1.

Impact and aftermath[edit]

The cold wave brought human fatalities, deaths of wild and domesticated animals, crop losses, and infrastructure damage to homes, municipality and industrial sites. At least 126 deaths were blamed on the cold snap.[14] Some 90 percent of the citrus crop in Florida was destroyed in what the state called the “Freeze of the Century.”[15] Florida’s citrus industry suffered $1.2 billion in losses ($2.3 billion in 2009 dollars) as a result of the inclement weather, which killed nearly every citrus tree in central Florida, and forced the industry permanently into southern Florida.[16] The public inauguration of President Ronald Reagan for his second term was held in the Capitol Rotunda instead of outside due to the cold weather, canceling the inaugural parade in the process. (Because Inauguration Day fell on a Sunday, Reagan took a private oath on January 20 and the semi-public oath on January 21.)[17]

U.S. state record lows set in 1985[edit]

Source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0113527.html

  • Colorado: −61 °F (−52 °C) Feb 1
  • North Carolina: −34 °F (−37 °C) Jan 21 atop Mount Mitchell
  • South Carolina: −19 °F (−28 °C) Jan 21
  • Utah: −69 °F (−56 °C) Feb 1
  • Virginia: −30 °F (−34 °C) Jan 22

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