On Today's Date: The March 1993 'Superstorm'
On March 12, 1993, 32 years ago today, low pressure intensified rapidly in the Gulf, and would then rake up the Eastern Seaboard the following weekend with historic impacts from Cuba to eastern Canada.
Dubbed "Superstorm" or the "Storm of the Century," it began by pushing a storm surge reminiscent of recent hurricanes into Florida's Gulf Coast, up to 12 feet in Taylor County. A squall line of severe thunderstorms raked across Cuba and the Florida Peninsula producing winds as high as 109 mph and spawning 15 tornadoes.
Along the East Coast, winds up to 90 mph were clocked in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 81 mph in Boston and 71 mph at New York's LaGuardia Airport. Coastal flooding and pounding surf damaged 200 homes in North Carolina's Outer Banks and at least 18 homes were lost on Long Island's coast.
The snow was also historic. At least 6 inches of snow was reported as far south as the western Florida Panhandle. Mt. LeConte, Tennessee, measured 56 inches of snow, and drifts up to 10 feet were reported in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina and Tennessee each set all-time snow depth records.
'Superstorm' claimed 270 lives in 13 states from Florida to Maine. Over 200 hikers needed rescue in the Appalachians. The total estimated damage in the U.S. was $12.2 billion (2024 dollars). Every major airport on the East Coast and virtually all interstates from northern Georgia northeastward were closed at one time or another and nearly 10 million customers lost electricity.
NOAA calculated almost 120 million in the East were impacted by the snowstorm. An estimated 44 million acre-feet of water was dumped on the East in the storm, about 40 days of Mississippi River flow at New Orleans, according to NOAA. It remains one of only two Category 5 East Coast snowstorms dating to 1950, according to the NESIS scale.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
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