There was nothing unusual about the weather in the Capital Region and Hudson Valley in the weeks leading up to the holiday season of 1948. Temperatures were seasonably cold and the ground was frozen after a few below-zero nights. There was little to no snow on the ground. But on Dec. 29, a moisture-filled low-pressure system moved into New England from the southwest, where it was blocked by high pressure over the North Atlantic and stalled. Temperatures rose, and it began to rain. And rain. And rain.
Between Dec. 29 and Jan. 1, between 5 and 12 inches of what meteorologists call "liquid equivalent precipitation," meaning both liquid and frozen water, fell over an area of about 4,500 square miles, primarily over the Housatonic and Hudson River basins of eastern New York and western New England. During the last 24 hours of the event, which ended on New Year's Day, the rain turned into a deadly progression of ice and then 10 inches of snow in the Albany area, according to records from the National Weather Service.
The result was one of the worst floods in the region's history. Record-breaking peaks occurred at several locations within the Hudson and Housatonic drainages. A still-record flood swelled the Hoosic River at Kinderhook, and many others remain in the top five of all time. The Hudson crested at 17.5 feet in Albany. Most of the flooding crested on either New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. Just about every creek, stream and river that drains into the Hudson from the east escaped its banks.
The floods, along with landslides caused by the heavy rain running under and loosening the frozen topsoil, washed out roads, bridges and railway lines. Then the ice came, bringing new kinds of catastrophic destruction. Ice accumulated on trees and wires and brought down power and telephone lines; for many locations, power and phone service were out for days. Schools were closed until Jan. 5.
Total damages from the storm were estimated to be approximately $10 million ($133 million in today's dollars). In addition, at least five lives were lost in Massachusetts (peak accumulations of just over 13 inches of liquid equivalent precipitation fell in the Berkshires) and Connecticut.
Much of the country was hammered by big storms that winter, said Steve DiRienzo, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in Albany. The Midwest and Great Plains were belted with a series of blizzards in 1949, "part of the winter from hell, really," he said, of which the local storm was one of the first.
Why?
"I don't know," he said with a chuckle. "The randomness of nature gets overlooked."
DiRienzo uses an apt signature on his emails to describe his job. It's a quote from Petteri Taalas, former secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization: "While there is a realization of what the weather might be, there is frequently a lack of understanding of what the weather might do."
As warning coordination meteorologist, DiRienzo helps prepare and educate communities and governments for extreme weather events like this one. He gave a talk about this storm at an operational workshop in 2018 to "try to shed some light" on how a "multi-modal" winter storm with rain, ice and snow like this developed. "You don't see many storms that give you all three," he said.
And that's "another reason for looking back at these storms: To aid weather forecasters' understanding of what is possible so we can message to minimize loss of life and property. A lot of bad storms have happened in the past that we can learn from. My theory is, if it happened once, it can happen twice."
If it does, it can produce scenes like this. The Knickerbocker News of Dec. 31 reported that Route 23A in Catskill was washed out. The Wappinger River flooded in Pleasant Valley, forcing at least six families to evacuate, according to the Greenfield (Mass.) Recorder-Gazette, and "Firemen used canoes to rescue stranded persons." New York Gov. Thomas Dewey spent New Year's Day touring hard-hit Rensselaer County. Doc Rivett, identified as "Times-Union Flood Watcher" in the sports pages, reported "passing scenes of harrowing portent to the sports world."
The storm was so big, lasted so long and was so damaging it prompted swift responses. The U.S. Geological Survey published a 104-page report on it in 1952. In February 1949, the new chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau in the area, Brian C. Johnson, met with the Troy Chamber of Commerce to promise better warnings if flooding in the spring was expected.
But back then, "Weather prediction was in its infancy," DiRienzo said. It mostly involved looking at hand-drawn weather charts passed from weather station to weather station. A storm had been predicted in the papers the day before, but not one of this magnitude.
Weather modeling came of age after World War II, when quite a lot was learned while planning major offensives like the invasion of Normandy, which hinged on the weather. Meteorologists were just beginning to develop the mathematical equations of atmospheric motion needed to predict the weather, he said, and the advent of computers turned those equations into models that can look farther into the future.
"Today, something that big, we would have a general idea at least three and maybe five days out," DiRienzo said. "Back then, that was a difficult thing to do."
It's still not perfect. "There are days I can tell you what will happen three days out, and others I can't tell you what will happen tomorrow," DiRienzo admitted. The many variables that go into weather forecasting are simply too complex and fluid for current computer models to make every picnic planner or skiing vacationer always happy.
Yet it's far better than in 1949. That meeting between the weather service and the Troy Chamber of Commerce was "kind of the beginning of issuing warnings," DiRienzo noted. The first tornado warnings were issued in the 1950s. "This is really the beginning of the age of sophisticated forecasting," he said.
Unfortunately, it took storms like this one to get there.