13 Years Ago, MA Was Digging Out After A Freak Snowstorm
Where were you on October 29th 2011? The reason why this particular date comes to mind is because Mother Nature surprised us with a massive snowstorm which hampered trick-or-treaters and put the brakes on Halloween parties in our vicinity.
This storm was nicknamed Oktober Blast, Snowtober and Shocktober just to name a few as this weather maker arrived two months after Hurricane Irene left it's mark with a vengeance throughout portions of our tri-state region. This snowfall ranged anywhere from two to three feet due to a cold front moving up from southeast of the Carolinas, hence the end result.
In neighboring Worcester, they tallied a record 14 inches of the white stuff. Some areas of Central Massachusetts got dumped with 2 feet as heavy, wet snow downed trees and power lines causing a series of outages in the Northeast. Some parts of Connecticut were without electricity for over 10 days and in The Berkshires the heavy amounts of precipitation also led to many residents being left in the dark as trees could not handle the excessive snowfall.
The previous biggest October snowfall was 7.5 inches on October 10th, 1979 as the Boston area was heavily impacted by this storm which occurred over 45 years ago. Statistics show there have only been a handful of storms in October since the National Weather Service began keeping records with areas that received over 2 inches of snow in one day.
The highest amount of snow measured in neighboring New York was over 21 and a half inches while Peru, Massachusetts in the hills of Berkshire county had a record 32 inches that fell from the skies above. The Halloween Nor-easter became the 14th multibillion-dollar weather-related disaster of 2011, breaking a three-year-old record.
BOTTOM LINE: Mother Nature truly was up to one of her old tricks with this weather related fiasco. So far, no storms for this October, but stand by as winter is knocking on our door and fall could take a holiday just like it did in 2011. We'll keep you posted!
(Some information obtained in this article courtesy of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Halloween_nor%27easter and https://www.telegram.com/story/news/2021/10/29/record-october-snowstorm-worcester-massachusetts-halloween-2011/6194529001/)
(Featured image photo courtesy of Al Simonov)
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