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" Some called it the Superstorm; others, the Storm of the Century. Both names were well-earned. When three independent weather patterns converged in the Gulf of Mexico in March of 1993, the resulting storm system caused three days of crippling snow, whirling seas, coastal flooding, blizzards, tornadoes and bone-chilling cold. The amount of snow and rain that fell during the storm was almost biblical -- 44 million acre-feet -- &amp;quot;comparable to 40 days flow on the Mississippi River at New Orleans,&amp;quot; according to a National Climatic Data Center report. The Superstorm of 1993 was a freak of nature. Its seeds had been sown a month earlier as the jet stream -- the river of air that flows east to west 30,000 ft. above North America -- dipped dramatically down from Canada and blasted cold arctic air across Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and Texas and into the Gulf of Mexico before banking back up the eastern seaboard. The jet stream that spring looked like a giant &amp;quot;U&amp;quot; flowing over the central and eastern United States. On Friday, March 12, a cluster of powerful thunderstorms formed in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico, and then merged with a narrow band of snow and rain that was pushing in from the West Coast. The two storm systems collided with the jet stream, and by 7 p.m. they began screaming across the Gulf toward Florida, pushing a large storm surge ahead of their path. &amp;quot;The sea conditions were absolutely incredible, unbelievable,&amp;quot; Coast Guard Petty Officer Rob Wyman told the Washington Post. &amp;quot;It looked like a big washing machine. There were huge waves and spray and hail.&amp;quot; The sea was so powerful that the 200-ft. freighter Fantastico sunk 70 miles off Ft. Myers, Fla. Three people were rescued from the 50-mph winds and 30-ft. swells, but seven crew members died when Coast Guard helicopters ran low on fuel and had to return to base. &amp;quot;They were just getting the hell beat out of them,&amp;quot; Wyman said. &amp;quot;I felt for them. They were just holding on, either too weak to grab the basket or too scared to grab it ... We were so close, so close to getting these guys, and we did absolutely everything we could. And we couldn&amp;#039;t get them.&amp;quot; Ten miles from Key West, the 147-ft. freighter Miss Beholding, hauling M&amp;amp;amp;Ms and candy bars, ran aground on a coral reef. Several charter fishing vessels and sailboats sank in deeper seas. By the time the Superstorm had passed, the Coast Guard had deployed more than a hundred planes, helicopters and boats, rescuing 235 people on more than a hundred boats in the Gulf of Mexico. But the storm was far from done causing devastation. It blew ashore, loaded with classic ingredients for tornado creation -- cold, dry air colliding with a warm, moist front. In Florida, the storm spun off no less than 15 twisters that overturned mobile homes and launched trees and other debris like missiles through the air. Between 4 and 5:30 a.m. on Saturday, a storm surge as high as 12 ft. in some places swept ashore and drowned at least seven people along Florida&amp;#039;s west coast. Temperatures on land dropped below freezing, and 6 in. of snow fell on the state&amp;#039;s normally balmy panhandle. Further inland, the temperature in Orlando fell to 33 F -- nine degrees below its record low for that day. The storm left 44 Florida residents dead in its wake. By 7 a.m. the storm reached Atlanta, dropping massive amounts of snow. Officials closed the airport, stranding 3,000 people, and residents used snowmobiles and skis to get around. At the Birmingham, Ala., office of the National Weather Service, meteorologists couldn&amp;#039;t quite believe what they were seeing on their computers. &amp;quot;The models must be nuts,&amp;quot; meteorologist Brian Peters said on March 12, as the storm barreled toward his city. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re looking at 12 to 18 in. of snow ... there&amp;#039;s just no way. That&amp;#039;s like 50 percent higher than any other previous record.&amp;quot; The models proved right. Birmingham got 13 in. of snow and temperatures dropped to a record 2 degrees F. In Boone, N.C., snowdrifts stacked 21 ft. high. Semi-trucks began jackknifing as the interstates iced up, causing miles-long delays and fatal accidents. I-75 experienced an 80-mile delay that stretched from outside Atlanta all the way to Tennessee. In the backcountry, hundreds of hikers had to be rescued along the Appalachian Trail. In the mountainous region of Georgia&amp;#039;s Walker County, eight people in two Jeeps were stranded when the storm set in. &amp;quot;It started snowing so hard you couldn&amp;#039;t see, like a fog,&amp;quot; Karen Thompson told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. &amp;quot;There was lightning all around, and then trees started cracking and popping. [They] started falling in front of us. The men would get out and chop, but the trees kept falling.&amp;quot; Seven members of the group were rescued after being spotted by a Georgia State Police helicopter on Sunday morning; one had died while hiking out for help. And the storm just kept going: 4.5 ft. of snow fell in Mount LeConte, Tenn.; in Latrobe, Pa., it drifted 10 ft. high. For the first time in history, every major airport along the eastern seaboard shut down. By late Saturday afternoon, the storm had descended on the major cities of the Northeast. Television coverage was nonstop. The nation&amp;#039;s capital looked completely abandoned as people hunkered down in their homes. The first of 12 in. of snow began falling on New York City by 7 p.m.; 1700 plows methodically cleared the streets, creating thick canyons of snow and ice that wouldn&amp;#039;t melt for days. Snow in parts of New Jersey was capped by a dangerous layer of sleet. As the storm continued to push north, it washed 18 vacation homes into the sea on the eastern end of Long Island. Though 2 ft. of snow became the norm in the Northeast, towns like Syracuse, N.Y., received almost 3 ft. Across New York State, 23 people died: Like those in neighboring New England, most were due to traffic accidents and snow-shoveling-induced heart attacks. The single most deadly event of the Superstorm would be its last. On Sunday, March 14, the 586-ft. freighter Gold Bond Conveyor was hauling 24,000 tons of gypsum through the North Atlantic -- 200 miles south of Nova Scotia, and parallel to southern Maine -- and heading straight into the storm. The captain reported that 90-mph winds and 100-ft. waves were battering the ship, and it was beginning to list.  Canada&amp;#039;s military dispatched a hulking, four-engine, Aurora turboprop patrol plane to keep watch over the Gold Bond. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been flying for five years, and it&amp;#039;s the worst weather I&amp;#039;ve ever seen,&amp;quot; the plane&amp;#039;s pilot, Captain Al Wongkee, told the Toronto Star on March 16. Around midnight, Gold Bond&amp;#039;s captain, Man Hoi Chan, radioed that the ship was listing 20 degrees; the Aurora began circling just 150 ft. above the water. &amp;quot;He just got hit by a huge swell and he went down,&amp;quot; said Wongkee, who watched through an infrared camera as the ship rolled. &amp;quot;You could hear him telling everybody to abandon ship, just after we&amp;#039;d flown over him. We&amp;#039;d gone out a couple of miles, turned around and come back over the top where the ship was, and everything was gone.&amp;quot; The entire crew -- 29 people from Hong Kong, three from China and one from Taiwan -- died in the frigid waters. Just one body was recovered when Canadian rescue helicopters arrived. Months later another body washed ashore on the coast of Ireland, putting a sober close to the Superstorm of 1993. The Aftermath Up and down the eastern seaboard, the Superstorm caused up to $6 billion in damage to cars, homes and businesses. It left 2.5 million people without power and killed 318. But thanks to early warnings -- and a light-traffic weekend -- fatalities were most likely lower than they could have been. Florida received the brunt of the storm: A federal disaster was declared in 21 of its 61 counties. In all, 18,000 homes were damaged -- particularly painful because the state was still recovering from 1992&amp;#039;s Hurricane Andrew. There was a round of finger-pointing between Florida Governor Lawton Chiles, local emergency officials and the National Weather Service (NWS). The governor wanted to know why people weren&amp;#039;t evacuated before the deadly storm surge hit; emergency officials said the NWS, run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), didn&amp;#039;t notify them of the problem. While the NWS had warned of a &amp;quot;storm of historic magnitude,&amp;quot; it acknowledged that local officials didn&amp;#039;t always get the message -- or appreciate the gravity of the situation. After the storm, NOAA initiated a thorough overhaul of how threats were communicated. Perhaps more importantly, the NWS realized it had a weakness in predicting specific local threats. It accelerated development of &amp;quot;numerical prediction models&amp;quot; for everything from Gulf-based storms to local storm surges and snowfall predictions. As a result, the NWS increased its snowfall-prediction accuracy rate to 75 percent -- up from just 37 percent at the time of the Superstorm. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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