Snow rollers in Columbus after the January 2-3, 1999 event.
In this episode of weather history, we’ll look at the January 1999 snowstorm that pummeled the Columbus area. New Year’s Day, 1999 dawned partly cloudy and cold in Ohio, a tranquil early January day in what had been until then a very warm fall and beginning to winter. Both November and December 1998 had been very warm months. December even had highs reaching into the 70’s early in the month, a truly rare occurrence. However, by the end of December, conditions had taken a turn.
On December 21, 1998, a cold front moved through Ohio, bringing copious amounts of rain. Most cities in Ohio received more than 1″ of rainfall, with several getting 2-3″. This front was the beginning of a very active period that would last for the next three weeks into mid-January. This pattern is not uncommon in La Nina winters, where the Midwest and Ohio Valley, in particular, are often much wetter than normal.
In any event, temperatures fell behind the front and remained generally below normal through the rest of the month of December, though no significant snow events came with the colder weather. That was about to change.
National radars on January 1, 1999 showed blossoming snow in the Great Plains, with cold air pushing south and abundant moisture pushing north from the Gulf of Mexico. Forecasts called for a significant winter storm beginning late on the 1st and lasting through the 2nd. The storm arrived a bit later than expected, but arrived in most areas during the overnight hours of the 1st/2nd as heavy snowfall. The snow initially fell at the rate of at least 1″ per hour, and thundersnow was reported from Cincinnati up through Dayton and Columbus.
During the day on the 2nd, warm air began to affect upper layers of the atmosphere, and the snow gradually began to change over to sleet and freezing rain, with an accumulation of ice of up to 1/2″ in some areas on top of the snow. By then, though, the damage was done. 4-6″ of snow fell in the Cincinnati area, with 6-10″ along the I-70 corridor. Up to 12″ fell to the north of there. Gusty winds created blowing and drifting snow at times, particularly in the northern areas that received less of a coating of ice.
Temperatures turned colder as the storm passed, and what precipitation remained changed back to snow showers by the 3rd of January. Temperatures would remain in the low to mid-teens for highs during the next two days before another storm would set eyes on the state.
Snow Totals for January 2-3, 1999 Dayton: 7.5″ Columbus: 6.6″ Cincinnati: 4.2″
2008 was a year of extreme weather events, but aside from the March Blizzard, the biggest story of the year was its severe wind events. Let’s take a look back at these events, but particularly at the Hurricane Ike disaster.
January 8th-9th Severe Weather Record warm temperatures in the upper 60s on the 7th-8th of January, 2008 gave way to storms and even a rare January Tornado Watch on the evening of the 8th. Winds had been gusty all during the day of the 8th, but reached their peak with the frontal passage storms. Rain and thunderstorms began moving into Ohio during the late afternoon and increased in intensity through the evening, prompting the NWS to issue a Tornado Watch just after 10pm. Although no tornadoes were reported anywhere in Ohio on the night of the 8th-9th, the storms brought with them rains of 1-2″ and winds of up to 70mph, causing many reports of minor structural damage and scattered power outages.
January 29th-30th Windstorm The second, more intense wind event for January in Ohio came during the last few days of the month. A very strong low pressure moved north and west of Ohio as strong high pressure moved south into the Plains. The resulting gradient caused winds to increase. Winds were sustained between 30-35mph most of the 29th. When the front arrived during the evening hours, winds ramped up even more, with winds sustained at 40-45 with gusts between 60-70mph. There was very little precipitation with this front. Reports of the event showed widespread high winds and minor to moderate damage in spots. On a personal note with this event, I witnessed several power poles bent over and large business signs blown out from the force of the January 29th-30th wind event.
Hurricane Ike and Ohio’s Worst Windstorm On September 1st, 2008, a tropical depression formed in the central Atlantic Ocean. That same day, the depression strengthened enough to gain a name: Ike. No one in Ohio anticipated that this storm, far out in the Atlantic, would cause the most widespread, destructive windstorm the state had ever seen.
Ike gradually became a hurricane and roared west and then southwest over Cuba as a Category 4 before turning back to the northwest and into the Gulf of Mexico. He churned westward growing in size as he went. The wind field of the hurricane was gigantic. Hundreds of miles from the center, tropical storm force winds were pounding parts of the Gulf Coast, giving an indication of the long-duration wind and surge potential.
Hurricane Ike made landfall near Galveston, Texas early on Saturday, September 13th with maximum sustained winds of 110mph. After landfall, the system turned to the north and then to the northeast as it hooked up with a frontal boundary that was draped across the Midwest. The system became extratropical by the end of the day on the 13th and gradually accelerated to the north and east towards the Great Lakes.
Now, at this point, that would normally be the end of the story. A dying tropical system far inland tends to produce a lot of rain and flooding, but wind is not usually an issue. And indeed, parts of Indiana, Missouri, and Illinois saw major and disastrous flooding from a combination of the frontal boundary and the remains of Ike. However, a very unusual situation occurred.
Over the Gulf of Mexico and up through landfall, Ike was never quite able to translate upper level high winds down to the surface. The sustained reading of 110mph at landfall never seemed to actually materialize in reports on the ground, and the vast majority of the damage along the Texas coastline was due to significant storm surge brought in by the massive size of the storm. However, Ike’s inability to translate the highest winds to the surface was about to change.
Ike maintained a very low pressure of between 986 and 990 throughout the journey through the OV and Great Lakes, and as he transitioned from tropical to extratropical, the remains actually intensified and Ike retained a large amount of his original wind field, particularly on the eastern side.
No one forecasted this. The NWS, as late as Saturday evening, had forecast winds of 30mph in gusts for much of Ohio and for the Columbus area, as seen in the September 13th forecast below.
OHZ045-046-054>056-140830- UNION OH-DELAWARE-MADISON-FRANKLIN OH-LICKING- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF…MARYSVILLE…DELAWARE…LONDON… COLUMBUS…NEWARK 404 PM EDT SAT SEP 13 2008
.TONIGHT…PARTLY CLOUDY THIS EVENING…THEN BECOMING MOSTLY CLOUDY. SCATTERED SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS. LOWS IN THE LOWER 70S. SOUTHWEST WINDS 10 TO 15 MPH. CHANCE OF RAIN 30 PERCENT. .SUNDAY…PARTLY SUNNY IN THE MORNING…THEN BECOMING MOSTLY CLOUDY. A CHANCE OF THUNDERSTORMS. A CHANCE OF SHOWERS IN THE MORNING…THEN SHOWERS LIKELY IN THE AFTERNOON. HUMID WITH HIGHS IN THE UPPER 80S. SOUTH WINDS 15 TO 20 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 30 MPH. CHANCE OF RAIN 70 PERCENT. .SUNDAY NIGHT…THUNDERSTORMS IN THE EVENING. SHOWERS. BREEZY WITH LOWS IN THE LOWER 60S. SOUTHWEST WINDS 15 TO 25 MPH… BECOMING WEST 10 TO 15 MPH AFTER MIDNIGHT. CHANCE OF RAIN 90 PERCENT.
Just 12 hours after the above forecast was made, on the morning of Sunday, September 14th, 2008, the National Weather Service in Wilmington had issued a Wind Advisory for its forecast area calling for gusty winds of 20-30mph with gusts up to 40mph.
URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE WILMINGTON OH 423 AM EDT SUN SEP 14 2008 …WIND ADVISORY IN EFFECT THIS AFTERNOON INTO THIS EVENING… .THE REMNANTS OF HURRICANE IKE WILL COMBINE WITH A QUICK MOVING COLD FRONT TO BRING WINDY CONDITIONS TO THE REGION TODAY. WAYNE-FAYETTE IN-UNION IN-FRANKLIN IN-RIPLEY-DEARBORN-OHIO- SWITZERLAND-CARROLL-GALLATIN-BOONE-KENTON-CAMPBELL-OWEN-GRANT-PENDLETON-BRACKEN-ROBERTSON-MASON-LEWIS-HARDIN-MERCER-AUGLAIZE-DARKE-SHELBY-LOGAN-UNION OH-DELAWARE-MIAMI-CHAMPAIGN-CLARK-MADISON-FRANKLIN OH-LICKING-PREBLE-MONTGOMERY-GREENE-FAYETTE OH-PICKAWAY-FAIRFIELD-BUTLER-WARREN-CLINTON-ROSS-HOCKING-HAMILTON-CLERMONT-BROWN-HIGHLAND-ADAMS-PIKE-SCIOTO- 423 AM EDT SUN SEP 14 2008 …WIND ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM NOON TODAY TO 9 PM EDT THIS EVENING… THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN WILMINGTON HAS ISSUED A WIND ADVISORY…WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM NOON TODAY TO 9 PM EDT THIS EVENING. THE REMNANTS OF HURRICANE IKE WILL COMBINE WITH A QUICK MOVING COLD FRONT TO BRING WINDY CONDITIONS TO THE REGION TODAY. SURFACE WINDS WILL BEGIN TO INCREASE THIS MORNING…WITH SUSTAINED SOUTH WINDS OF 25 TO 35 MPH AND GUSTS ABOVE 40 MPH EXPECTED BY THIS AFTERNOON. THE STRONG WINDS WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THE AFTERNOON AND INTO THE EARLY EVENING UNTIL A COLD FRONT PASSES THROUGH THE REGION. A WIND ADVISORY IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS ARE FORECAST TO BE 31 TO 39 MPH OR GUSTS WILL RANGE BETWEEN 46 AND 57 MPH. WINDS OF THESE MAGNITUDES MAY CAUSE MINOR PROPERTY DAMAGE WITHOUT EXTRA PRECAUTIONS. MOTORISTS IN HIGH PROFILE VEHICLES SHOULD USE CAUTION UNTIL THE WINDS SUBSIDE.
However, even the wind advisory quickly became obsolete. Kentucky was already getting rocked with high winds of over 50mph, and the winds seemed to intensify even more as the core began to move into Ohio through Cincinnati.
By late morning, winds in Cincinnati had reached a *sustained* speed of 54mph with gusts to hurricane force! These heavy winds began to ride up the I-71 corridor, reaching Wilmington by noon and Columbus by 2pm. Wilmington didn’t upgrade its advisory to a High Wind Warning until 12:49PM, when parts of the state were already getting walloped by damaging winds. For several hours, high winds pounded the area. Sustained winds over 50mph were common, and gusts of 70-80mph were widespread. The winds did not begin to die down until after 6pm, and by 8pm, the area had gone almost completely calm. There had been almost no precipitation whatsoever during the entire event.
When the storm was over, more than 2.5 million Ohio residents were without power, including more than 55% of Columbus, one of the largest outages ever known in state and local history. Tens of thousands of trees had fallen and debris of all kinds was everywhere. Power lines had been snapped, signs had been blown down, billboards had been destroyed, and thousands of homes and buildings had sustained damage from broken windows to siding and parts of roofs blown off. Power remained out for thousands for up to two weeks after the storm passed, and there was a sea of blue tarps covering roofs throughout Central Ohio for months.
The story was the same up and down I-71 up through Cleveland, although damage there was less than that in central and southern parts of Ohio. The severe wind field was about 100 miles across and centered through the major cities on I-71. Insured losses from this storm totaled well over a billion dollars, and total damage was at least double that figure. This made the storm one of the most damaging natural disasters in Ohio history, exceeding those like the Blizzard of 1978, the 1974 Xenia Tornado and perhaps even the Great Flood of 1913 in adjusted dollars. Additionally, 7 people lost their lives in the storm.
Highest Wind Gusts in Ohio on 9/14/2008 Highest measured wind gusts — official observations 75 mph — Port Columbus International Airport (Franklin County, OH) 74 mph — Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky Int’l Airport (Boone County, KY) 74 mph — Airborne Airpark, Wilmington, OH (Clinton County, OH) 69 mph — Bolton Field (Franklin County, OH) 69 mph — Rickenbacker Airport (Franklin County, OH) 68 mph — Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (Montgomery County, OH) 63 mph — OSU Airport (Franklin County, OH) 61 mph — Cincinnati Lunken Municipal Airport (Hamilton County, OH) 60 mph — Dayton International Airport (Montgomery County, OH) 59 mph — Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (Greene County, OH)
As in most cases, recording equipment only captured a small snapshot of actual winds, with many areas seeing higher gusts than were officially recorded by instruments. Overall, the highest wind gusts and sustained winds on September 14, 2008 were not the highest ever recorded in Columbus and other places, but they were generally in the top 5. However, previous events had generally been recorded during severe thunderstorms, and so were rather brief in duration. That September day, winds roared at top strength for 3-5 hours, allowing the damage to be far more widespread than it would’ve been in a thunderstorm. Therefore, it stands as one of the worst wind events in Ohio history.
Videos from around Ohio on 9/14/2008 Columbus
Cincinnati
Dayton
Elsewhere
Weather events like this are truly rare, but history is full of severe weather of all types across the Columbus area. Weather History provides links to all sorts of records and event descriptions.
