It was 1950. On Thanksgiving Day, football fans at Legion Field were watching the Crippled Children’s Clinic High School Championship Football game. Many of them were in short sleeves. It was a springlike 70 degrees.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Weather Bureau (as it was known then) had already issued a stern warning of a massive cold wave.
The term “Cold Wave Warning” is no longer in the NWS dictionary, but I very much miss that title, because it would grab your attention for sure and make you shiver from head to toe. It had a musical ring to it.
However, the Warning sounded so drastic that people in Alabama could not believe it and many ignored it. Some folks on the radio scoffed at the forecast. There was no weather radio in those days.
The next morning on November 24, they did believe it. Here in Birmingham, the ground was white with snow and blown about by the wind and with temperatures in the mid 20s. That night the temperature bottomed out at 5 above zero at Birmingham Airport, so the temperature had a freefall of 65 degrees in only 38 hours.
That 5 above zero was, of course, an all-time November record that still stands without any competition. It sticks out like a sore thumb on the November record low list. It is the only time in history that the temperature has been a single digit in the month of November. The record low for the next day is 23.
All over Alabama, people were shivering to beat the band. Decatur had a 64-degree drop from 67 to 3 above zero. Huntsville had a 65-degree plunge to 1 above zero and Muscle Shoals from 66 to 2 above. Some of the coldest temperatures included 1 above at Scottsboro and 2 below in Valley Head.
Further south the change was also severe. People in T-town really felt it. At Tuscaloosa Airport, there was a 69-degree plunge from a springlike 79 to 10 above zero. Montgomery dropped from 72 to 13.
Even the coast felt the brunt of the cold. At Mobile Airport, there was a 51-degree drop from 73 to 22. Robertsdale changed from 72 to 20 and Dothan from 74 to 17.
14 persons in Alabama died from the extreme cold. One man was found frozen to death lying in the snow on Sand Mountain in Jackson County. The other 13 died in house fires.
There was extensive freeze damage over the whole state, especially to plumbing and automobile radiators.
Will we have another bitter cold wave this winter, even though it is no longer called that?
Don’t know. Have no idea.
Just think–that cold wave 57 years ago occurred in Autumn. Winter had not even arrived. Winter will be here shortly, because all of us weather humans count December, January and February as Winter.
I well remember that 1950 cold wave. I had already moved to Jefferson County from Havana Junction and had set up my weather instruments at McCalla. The low there was 3.
Were you there? I have a hunch that a number of our readers were sitting in the stands at Legion Field on that 1950 Thanksgiving day laughing and making fun of the U.S Weather Bureau.
