Holiday Storms In Massachusetts

Massachusetts is expected to feel some effects from Tropical Storm Hermine. As it stands right now, we should be getting it on Labor Day.

We'll do some forecasting in our next article, but today we want to point out a pair of unique weather milestones that you may see Monday.

1) This is the second Tropical Storm Hermine we've had to deal with. A minimal-strength Tropical Storm Hermine came ashore in New Bedford back in 2004.

and

2) We'll be getting a Holiday Storm.

Green Harbor, MA

Storms are always bad things (although we could use the rain), but they are worse when they fall on a holiday. Plans go awry, travel becomes dangerous, and what should be a festive event instead becomes arduous and perhaps even deadly.

Tropical Storm Hermine may become the storm for Labor Day. "Labor Day Low" is a good and accurate name for it, although it's not really that catchy.

That may be a good thing. As bad as Hermine may be for your golf outings and cookouts, it doesn't look to be a storm that will rank well historically. It will be very much like a nor'easter, especially in terms of duration and intensity. It may not really deserve a cooler name, unless it intensifies or makes a direct landfall.

Duxbury, MA

Hurricane Earl in 2010 just missed being a Labor Day storm, passing on Saturday, September 4th. Earl missed Cape Cod, but still did some damage. One Yarmouth motel had an 85% decrease in rentals, despite dropping their price from $135 to $85.

A blizzard in 1969 struck western Massachusetts on the day after Christmas, but it didn't hit our reading area. We have a few other near-misses, and I don't know dates of other religions well enough to tell you if there was a Passover nor'easter or a Ramadan blizzard.

The longshot chance for a worthy Holiday Storm status application would be if Hermine bopped around just south of us for 3 days. "72 Hours Of Labor" or something like that would be a sweet headline.

You can't have a lame storm holding a holiday name. Every storm I'll be listing below was a Doozy. They wrecked shop, and no one would contest their ownership of a certain day. "The Arbor Day Sunshower" isn't really going to impress future weather historians.

Several storms in Massachusetts history have sort of placed their claim on certain holidays. Hermine is close to staking one for Labor Day, but that is just one of the many holidays that we celebrate in Massachusetts.

Here are a few other notable holiday storms. Blizzards are represented harder than hurricanes because A) winter is longer and B) August, a prime month for summer storms, has no holidays.

Duxbury Beach, MA

The Halloween Gale

This was the worst holiday storm. Technically, the height of it was on Devil's Night. However, nor'easters are the gift that keeps giving, and the Perfect Storm laid into us for 8-10 tides.

She should have been Hurricane Henri, but the National Weather Service felt that naming the storm would have some adverse publicity thing that might endanger someone.

There was no landfall with this hurricane, but it inflicted ridiculous coastal damage onto eastern Massachusetts. I was trapped in a waterfront house on Duxbury Beach for this worst part of this one. If they had the internet back then, I would be YouTube Famous, as waves were breaking on top of the two story house I was in.

It was close as I've come to being killed, and I was, at various points in my life, a bouncer, a night-shift gas station attendant, a guy getting a tour of a nuclear power plant, a graveyard shift night auditor at a drug hotel, a lifelong drug user, a Boston schoolteacher and someone who has A) had a shotgun pointed in his face during an armed robbery, B) had more than one episode in his life where he fought more than one person at once, C) suffered two electrocutions.

The April Fool's Day Blizzard

Sandwich, MA

April snow in Massachusetts isn't that unusual, but 28 inches of it in a day is a bit notable. 1997 gave us that.

This storm also had the coastal flooding component. Winds reached hurricane force along the Massachusetts coast.

I also caught this one from Duxbury. This was before the neighborhood was built up, so i had the only fireplace on my street.... which means that I had a dozen neighbors laying on my floor in front of it once the power went out.

It's also the event where I had an Australian nanny from the neighborhood call me during the height of the storm and ask "When does the Army come and take all the snow away?"


The Groundhog Day Blizzard

There are several contenders for this title, but we'll use the recent one from 2015 because I have pictures of it.

This was very nearly the Super Bowl Blizzard, as it nearly struck on the day that the New England Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks for the Lombardi Trophy. It came the day after instead, and everyone blamed Punxsatawney Phil.

This could have very easily been the Malcolm Butler Blizzard, as at least one blizzard I can think of (the infamous Lindsay storm, named after a poor-responding NYC mayor) is named for a minor celebrity. Barry White should have had his own blizzard, IMHO.

This was from that winter where it snowed every 3 days and we had a blizzard every Monday. I could probably find the snowfall totals in our archives, but they matter very little. We had meters of snow on the ground before the blizzard, and whatever powder this storm dropped was akin to getting a glass of water and pouring it into a lake.

I wasn't in Pennsylvania for this storm... but if I was,and if that little groundhog stuck his head up out of his little hidey-hole, I would have kicked it.

Ocean Bluff,  MA

The Inauguration Day Blizzard

I'm not sure if Abe Lincoln or Will McKinley had snowstorms on the day that they took office, but it is definitely a bad thing if they did. JFK's ascension into the Presidency was marked by a now-ominous snowstorm back in his native state.

"It's like raaaaaaaaaaaaainnnn on your wedding day...."

20 inches of snow fell across Massachusetts, and even JFK got some snow on the ol' Chowderhead down in DC.


The Ash Wednesday Storm

OK, we're pushing it now. I also think that I may be missing a Columbus Day hurricane, an Easter blizzard or a Thanksgiving nor'easter.

Ah, well... maybe some old-timers can help us out in the Comments section.

This was a furious nor'easter that did damage up most of the mid-Atlantic and New England coastline in 1962.

Duxbury, MA