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D-Day: Weather and History Intersect

This coming Sunday, we will celebrate the 77th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, which was a major turning point in World War II. If you are familiar with history, you may have heard the many tales of how crucial the weather forecasts were for this operation. I personally knew the basics facts of how the invasion was delayed a day due to weather, and that it was an extremely tense and high-pressure decision when General Dwight D. Eisenhower made the ‘go’ call on June 6, 1944. However, I learned some really interesting information as I dove into this topic more deeply for this blog. I hope that you find it as interesting as I did!

Courtesy: National World War II Museum.
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The Great London Smog of 1952

I have to admit, I had never heard of ‘The Great London Smog’ event until I watched The Crown on Netflix, and an entire episode was dedicated to this event (It’s Season 1, Episode 4, if anyone is interested). The episode was well-done, and dove into some of the politics surrounding the event and also told some harrowing personal stories. As a meteorologist and a reader of history, I was interested to learn more about how this event unfolded.

Getty Images
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It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a…snowflake?

In this day and age, it seems as though there are statistics, records, and rankings for everything. Top ten most expensive plants? Check. Ten most poisonous animals in the world? There’s a list for that (hint: be very careful swimming in the ocean waters of northern Australia). Here is another record which you may not be aware of: on this date (January 28) in 1887, the world’s largest snowflake is said to have fallen on the Fort Keogh Army Post in Montana. How did this record-breaking event come to be recorded, and why has the record not been broken? Let’s take a closer look.

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A Look Back at Hurricane Michael

Three hundred and sixty-five days have passed since Hurricane Michael crashed into the Florida Panhandle, causing utter devastation. Michael made history as the first Category 5 hurricane (the highest category of the Saffir-Simpson scale with winds over 157 miles per hour) to make landfall in the Unites States since Andrew in 1992. It was also the first Category 5 hurricane on record to impact the Florida Panhandle.

Hurricane Michael beginning to make landall on October 10, 2018. Courtesy NASA
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