Overview

March is known to feature some crazy and surprising weather and the 1958 blizzard that occurred in the Mid-Atlantic region between March 18th and 23rd was indeed rather unexpected. In general, forecasts on the morning of March 18th had no mention of snow. This was in an era when computer forecast models were just in their infancy and it was even before satellite imagery existed which could aid in the forecast. By afternoon on that particular day, the light rain had changed into huge, wet snowflakes and - for the next few days - history was being made.

Discussion

This was a relatively warm storm and it was quite a struggle for the precipitation to fall in the form of snow. However, as low pressure intensified off of the Mid-Atlantic coastline, heavy, wet snow began to pile up. Under the weight of the heavy wet snow, it didn’t take long for trees to start snapping in the Mid-Atlantic region and power outages spread as electric power lines started coming down. In addition, many houses suffered severe damage to roofs, porches and sheds as incredible amounts of heavy wet snow piled up.

