From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Terms like Superstorm and Storm of the Century are often bandied about, but what caused the “No Name Storm” which hit the US in March 1993 definitely warranted these epithets.

It spawned a derecho and tornadoes in Florida, where the storm surge wiped out coastal communities. The storm then headed north bringing record snowfall, floods and hurricane force winds in its wake as far as Canada. The whole of the eastern third of the US was affected, with 318 left dead.

Even after the storm had passed, its effects lingered for weeks. So much snow had fallen, that when it melted  it resulted in river floods.

This film was put together by the Weather Channel a year after the storm, hence the poor video quality, but it is the best I have found. It lasts half an hour, but it is really fascinating to watch, since the storm was still fresh in people’s minds:

There are claims nowadays that global warming is making these sort of extratropical storms more powerful, hence the absurd media overreaction to Ciaran this month. The logic seems to be that climate change is supposed to make every weather more extreme. In reality the opposite is the case, as HH Lamb knew decades ago.

What powers these storms is the clash of cold and warm air; the bigger the differential in temperature, the more powerful the storm. That is why winter storms are always stronger and bigger – during winter the Arctic cools rapidly as the sun sets, while the tropics remain as warm as before.

As during periods of global warming the Arctic warms faster than the tropics , this differential is therefore reduced.

In the winter of 1993, when massive powerful storms also hit Britain, the Arctic was much colder than normal, after decades of global cooling; this factor was the root cause of these storms:

The film finishes by reflecting on the bitterly cold winter of 1994 just passed, a reminder of what extreme weather really looks like!