On January 13, 1982, an Air Florida Boeing 737-222 plunged into
the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., killing 78 people. The
crash, caused by bad weather, took place only two miles from
the White House.
The Air Florida flight took off from Washington National Airport
in Arlington, Virginia, with 74 passengers and 5 crew members
on board. The plane had flown into Washington from Miami in
the early afternoon and was supposed to return to Ft. Lauderdale,
Florida, after a short stop.
On February 2, 1887, Groundhog Day, featuring a rodent meteorologist,
was celebrated for the first time at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney,
Pennsylvania. According to tradition, if a groundhog comes out of its
hole on this day and sees its shadow, it gets scared and runs back into
its burrow, predicting six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow
means an early spring.
Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition called
Candlemas, when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed
for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter
would be. Germans expanded on this concept by selecting an animal–
the hedgehog–as a means of predicting weather. Once they came to
America, German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition,
although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs, which were
plentiful in the Keystone State.
The Columbus Day Storm of 1962 (also known as the Big Blow, and originally as Typhoon Freda) was a Pacific Northwest windstorm
that struck the West Coast of Canada and the Pacific Northwest
coast of the United States on Friday October 12, 1962.
Scoreboard at Gresham High School in Gresham, Oregon.
A car flattened by a brick wall at NW 3rd and Everett St. in Portland, Oregon.
The first observance of Groundhog Day began in Punxsutawney,
PA.
The earliest mention of Groundhog Day is a February 2, 1840 entry in the
diary of James L. Morris of Morgantown, Pennsylvania.
The Columbus Day Storm of 1962 was a Pacific Northwest windstorm, that
struck the West Coast of Canada and the Pacific Northwest coast of the
United States. It was the remnants of Typhoon Freda. Most storm analysts
rate this windstorm as the most powerful to strike the Pacific Northwest
during the 20th Century.
A downed tree in Salem, Oregon.
Storm damage in McMinnville, Oregon.
