After enjoying mild weather, rural communities in the northwest plains of the US were caught tragically ill-prepared as chilling winds and a snowstorm hit them with no warning. It was reported that the temperature fell nearly 37°C (100°F) in just 24 hours on 12 January 1888. It’s thought 235 people died from hypothermia, many of them children and farm workers making their way home in the perilous conditions. According to reports, the Army Signal Corps (who were then tasked with weather reporting) chose not to issue a cold wave warning the previous night.
Another calamitous and unexpected blizzard struck the country later that winter but on the east coast. According to NOAA, the weather was pleasant on 10 March 1888 but soon turned deadly with heavy snow and cold winds, leaving many workers stranded and freezing to death. More than 400 people died with 200 deaths in New York City alone. It also capsized 200 vessels along the eastern seaboard, resulting in the death of 100 seamen. Along with its previous failure to issue a cold wave warning that year, the meteorological service was moved out of the war department to improve "forecasting and preparedness". Two years later, the Weather Bureau was created under the Department of Agriculture.
Beginning during the evening of 27 January, the so-called Knickerbocker Storm saw a total of 2ft 4in (0.7m) of snow fall in just over 24 hours in Washington DC, a record for a single storm. The huge snowstorm dump was a complete surprise to the capital as local forecasts had predicted mild weather just the day before. The storm got its moniker after the Knickerbocker Theater, whose roof collapsed under the weight of the snow, killing 98 people and injuring 133 more.
A lack of warning from weather forecasters made this tornado one of the deadliest in US history when it barrelled along from southeastern Missouri through southern Illinois and into southwestern Indiana on 18 March 1925. The large and fast weather system killed 695 people, 600 of which were in Illinois, the worst hit state. Entire towns and farms were destroyed and thousands were left homeless. The forecast had been normal for that day. In fact, the word “tornado” had been banned from US weather forecasts since the late 19th century to avoid inciting panic and would continue to be until the 1950s.
A seminal moment in US weather history took place after a tornado tore into the Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, on 20 March 1948, causing damage of more than $10 million. According to NOAA, the base's commanding general tasked his weathermen with ensuring it didn’t happen again. On studying various reports around tornadoes, five days later they noticed the weather pattern for the day was similar to 20 March. They issued the nation's first official tornado forecast and mere hours later another tornado struck the airbase. In 1952, a Severe Local Storms (SELS) unit was established within the Weather Bureau to issue the first public tornado forecasts.
The great storm of 1953, which saw a storm surge inundate the eastern coast of England and the Netherlands, was Britain's worst peacetime disaster on record. More than 2,500 people were killed around the North Sea coastline, including 307 in England and 19 in Scotland. According to the Met Office, it and its Dutch counterpart did forecast dangerously high water levels several hours before but it was the lack of public warning systems that led to the high causalities. An inquiry into the disaster recommended a flood warning organisation should be set up. This led to the setting up of the Storm Tide Warning Service and eventually the creation of the Thames Barrier.
Despite just a few inches of snow being predicted to fall, Chicago shivered in nearly two foot (0.6m) of snow during a winter storm in January 1967. Caught by surprise, the blizzard paralysed the city, leaving around 800 Chicago Transit Authority buses and 50,000 cars abandoned on the city's streets and forcing the closure of O'Hare Airport. Many commuters didn't make it home and were forced to stay in hotels or at work. By the Friday morning the city's streets were impassable with helicopters needed to deliver essential supplies to hospitals.
Central and southeast England was blasted with an unforeseen snowstorm on 4 March 1970 with very little warning from the weather forecasters. The Met Office only issued snow alerts in the early hours of the morning, leaving most people unprepared for the 12-18 inches (30-46cm) of heavy snow that fell in 10 hours and blocked roads, leaving many motorists stranded.
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How to end a rare and devastating drought? Appoint a minister for drought. After experiencing a record-breaking heatwave in 1976 with wall-to-wall blue skies, searing sunshine and no hint of rain from May until August, the UK was suffering from drought conditions with real worries about water supplies running out. The first-ever minister for drought, Denis Howell, was duly appointed to address the situation. However, he was swiftly nicknamed the minister for rain as the day after he was installed it began pouring. Just in time for a soggy August bank holiday weekend.
Even with the technology today, meteorologists can get hurricane tracks wrong by an average of 100 miles (161km). In late August 1985, Hurricane Elena defied and exasperated forecasters with its twisted track that triggered numerous evacuations along the US’ Gulf Coast before it deviated once again from its forecast path. Although it caused nine deaths and $1.3 billion in damage when it came ashore as a Category 3 (a scale of hurricane intensity starting at 74mph/119kmh) to Biloxi, Mississippi, it was more disruptive for its erratic nature. According to NOAA, the ever-shifting warning zones caused what was the largest peacetime evacuation in US history at that time.
With rumours of an imminent hurricane infamously dismissed by BBC weatherman Michael Fish, the devastating Great Storm of 1987 went on to wreak havoc across the country in the early hours of 16 October. Fish was right in that it wasn’t officially a hurricane but the 100mph-plus (161kmh) winds led to 18 deaths, a ship capsizing and around 15 million trees being felled. According to the Met Office, warnings of severe weather were issued to various agencies and emergency authorities, but by the time most people had gone to bed the exceptionally strong winds hadn't been mentioned in radio and TV weather broadcasts.
This violent tropical storm caused a headache to US meteorologist who struggled to forecast its intensity, as it strengthened extremely rapidly from just off the Florida coast. Charley underwent rapid intensity from Category 2 to Category 4 status in just five hours on the morning of its landfall. It made landfall at its peak intensity near Cayo Costa, Florida, with winds of 150mph (241kmh) and caused extensive damage across the Florida Peninsula. It was to be one of the US’ costliest hurricanes.
A lack of warning caught the community of the Cornish fishing village of Boscastle unaware when they were hit by a powerful torrent of water that swept away cars and buildings on 17 August. With heavy rain in the area, a flood watch, which suggests a possibility of flooding, had been issued but this was the lowest level of alert. A Met Office forecaster and spokesman told the media after the event the unpredictable weather pattern had formed locally when inland and coastal air masses converged, rose and created rain. The village was left with millions of pounds of damage, but remarkably no deaths.
The British public's hopes for a “barbecue” summer were dampened in 2009 when rains and winds kicked in. In April, the Met Office had issued a long-range seasonal forecast that heralded a sunny summer making a bold claim that the UK was "odds-on for a barbecue summer". Instead, holidaymakers were faced with a soggy summer break as the weather bureau later revised its forecast to “unsettled” weather. The British media were full of scorn for the Met Office, nicknaming it the “Wet Office”. “Seasonal forecasting is still a new science,” it said in a statement. “It's something we are still building on.”
Another nail in the coffin for the Met Office’s long-range forecasts came later in 2009 as the country shivered in the coldest winter it had experienced for more than 30 years, despite the weather bureau predicting there was only a one-in-seven chance of a below average cold winter. The Met Office dropped public announcements of its seasonal forecasting service after these back-to-back miscalculations. While short-term weather forecasts are much more accurate today, long-term predictions still remain challenging, particularly for Britain due to its size and geographical position.
Predicting the monsoons in India is a notoriously difficult task, but the failure of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) to foresee what would be the worst drought to affect India in nearly four decades in 2009 still shadows the bureau. It had forecast that the monsoons for the year would be on time and at normal levels, which gave farmers the go-ahead to sow their seeds accordingly. The subsequent delay and low levels of critical summer rains devastated the country’s seeds, crops and farming communities. A few years later the IMD joined up with some of the world's major forecasters in an effort to forecast monsoons more accurately.
A high-profile firing came after Filipino weather forecasters failed to warn the public that a typhoon would strike the capital Manila. Typhoon Conson hit the populous city on 14 July, killing 111 and caused major structural damage. President Benigno Aquino III later criticised the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) for its errors in predicting the storm and its chief Prisco Nilo was removed from office. He blamed low budgets and inadequate equipment.
Sometimes authorities and weather chiefs decide not to broadcast weather forecasts. According to an article in The Telegraph, the Met Office had privately forewarned the UK government in October 2010 that Britain was likely to experience an extremely cold winter. This was not shared with the public after it had faced severe criticism over the accuracy of its long-term forecasts in previous years. A public warning was later issued about the early onset of winter, just days before snow and ice descended on much of Britain and caused all-round traffic chaos.
It’s widely acknowledged that science mostly got the forecast correct for Sandy, a hurricane and later so-called superstorm that roared up the Atlantic Coast from the Caribbean in October 2012. But it was the classification of the storm that is thought to have had an impact on the way the public reacted. In line with its protocol, the National Hurricane Centre decided not to issue hurricane warnings north of North Carolina, when Sandy merged with two cold-weather systems to become an unusual hybrid storm. This contributed to miscommunication and confusion for the various authorities issuing alerts to the public, some of whom may not have taken the storm as seriously.
Further proof of the difficulty in forecasting erratic tropical storms came with Erika in late August 2015, which lashed parts of the Caribbean with heavy rain. It was thought Erika would intensify into a hurricane with US landfall and so a state of emergency was declared in Florida with flights pre-emptively cancelled and schools closed. The storm was one of the deadliest and most destructive natural disasters in Dominica due to flash flooding and mudslides but it dissipated over eastern Cuba leaving Florida in the clear.
Those hoping for a “snow day” were sorely disappointed in 2015 when a snowstorm of epic proportions failed to materialise in New York. In a now infamous weather blunder, the forecast blizzard veered about 15 miles (24km) east of the Big Apple. Mayor Bill de Blasio had said: “This could be the biggest snowstorm in the history of this city. My message for New Yorkers is prepare for something worse than we have ever seen before." The New York City authorities imposed a driving ban and shut the subway for the first time in its history because of snow. In the end New Yorkers got an anti-climactic dusting of the white stuff: just five inches (12.7cm) fell in Central Park as opposed to the forecasted three foot (91cm).
Indonesia’s government admitted a failure by its weather agency in predicting the effects of the El Nino weather phenomenon in 2015 which saw a prolonged dry spell lead to a severe fire season. The country experienced exceptionally ferocious forest fires, fuelled by the extremely dry conditions caused by the El Nino effect (an abnormal weather pattern caused by the warming of the Pacific Ocean near the equator). The blazes caused a thick haze to blanket parts of Southeast Asia for months and have since been linked to hundreds of thousands of haze-related respiratory illnesses and deaths.
A very severe Cape Verde hurricane, which devastated the island of Dominica and later Puerto Rico in September 2017, caught forecasters off-guard as it rapidly intensified from a Category 1 storm to a Category 5 within a 15-hour period. According to NOAA, weather forecasting models failed to anticipate Maria’s rare and rapid intensification on 18 September, which led to it under-predicting the storm’s strengthening.
The unprecedented strength of this weather system had meteorologists agog in 2017. Reaching maximum sustained winds of 215mph (346kmh) in the eastern Pacific Ocean, it was the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. A hurricane scientist for the National Hurricane Center, posted on social media in amazement: “For posterity – 200mph for a #hurricane – never seen that in modern satellite era!” It made landfall on the Pacific coast of Mexico on 23 October, with winds of 165mph (265kmh), but thankfully worries of a catastrophic impact didn’t materialise as it weakened extremely quickly.
Tourists and the tourism industry were left fuming after the BBC’s weather app forecast rain on a May bank holiday weekend, according to reports. The weather turned out to be lovely and sunny but beachgoers stayed away from coastal resorts such as Bournemouth and Brighton apparently due to the dreary weather outlook, which predicted a 60% chance of thunderstorms. This glitch came shortly after the BBC stopped using the Met Office for weather forecasts, switching to MeteoGroup instead.
Gale-force winds, torrential rain, hail and intense lightning strikes caught everyone off guard, including weather forecasters, in the northern Greece region of Halkidiki when an extremely unusual weather system swept in suddenly on a seemingly normal July evening. The so-called “weather bomb” lasted just 20 minutes but caused extensive damage and led to seven deaths.
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The fatalities caused by two tornadoes that roared through central Tennessee, including Nashville, in March 2020, have been linked to a lack of warning. While the line of destructive storms in the state was being tracked, the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center placed Nashville in its “slight” risk zone for severe weather the previous day. The tornado, which hit the downtown area late at night, catching many people unaware, was rated as a level 3 on the EF scale, which measures wind speeds and related damage. A meteorologist later told the press that severe storms "usually don’t offer us as much lead time because the tornadoes happen quickly and then they are gone".