I am writing this at the stroke of midnight. At this very hour in 1993, Alabama was slowly being shut down by one of the greatest winter storms ever in the USA.
It became known as the “Blizzard of ’93.”
Later today we will post a comprehensive list of all the official snow depths in Alabama from this great storm. By the time the storm abated on the morning of March 14, it had dumped:
13 inches at Birmingham Airport
17 inches in Huffman
20 inches in Chattanooga (an all-time record)
26 inches in Hazzard, Kentucky
50 inches on Mt. Mitchell, North Carolina
18 inches at Asheville, North Carolina
40 inches at High Nob, Virginia
30 inches at Frostburg, Maryland
31 inches at Beckley, West Virginia
44 inches at Snowshoe, West Virginia
28 inches at Cooperstown, New York (more than the Blizzard of 1888)
Very high winds caused widespread tree and structural damage from NW Florida into New England. A wind gust of 110 mph in Franklin County in NW Florida.
Record low barometric pressure also.
This was not a record snow for all of Alabama. For example, only 3 inches fell at Hamilton and 4 inches at Muscle Shoals, Vernon and Tuscaloosa. By the morning of March 14, the temperature had dropped to a record low of 2 above zero at Birmingham Airport.
At this very hour, eerie green lightning was occurring with snow falling so fast it was almost a whiteout. There was a muffled sound of thunder.
Again, later today a lot more about this historic storm.
