Word: colds
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Great Blizzard. The cold in the west was not the bright, dry cold that westerners pretend to enjoy so much. It snowed & snowed & snowed. Bitter cold and roaring wind turned the snowstorms into blizzards. The great blizzard of early January was the worst that ever hit the high-plains states. In South Dakota the Black Hills region got 50 inches of snow; Deadwood got 77 inches. Total snowfall for January in western Nebraska averaged 70 inches...
What made the winter so odd? The Weather Bureau, which would like everyone to remember that it saw just such a winter shaping up as early as November, says that the same basic condition caused both the western cold and the eastern warmth. The villain, says William H. Klein of the bureau's Extended Forecast Section, was an "excess of [air] mass" in the subpolar regions of the Western Hemisphere and a "deficit of mass" in the subtropics. This unbalanced condition, favoring the southward movement of cold air, upset the whole air circulation...
Weak Westerlies. The mid-latitude westerlies, which normally blow across the country toward New England, were comparatively feeble this year. Their weakness allowed cold air to sweep down unchecked from Canada, keeping warm winds away from the western states and bringing them abnormally cold and stormy weather...
...opposite effect in the east. A high-pressure area (the Bermuda High) was unusually strong and hung persistently off the coast. The wind circulating clockwise around it brought warm, moist air from over the Gulf Stream. Unchecked by the westerlies, it penetrated far into the interior, keeping the western cold away and giving the eastern U.S. a balmy "maritime" winter...
...Weather Bureau refuses to say whether the winters of the U.S. as a whole are getting warmer or colder, or what effect sunspots have on them. It suspects that a cold cycle may be in the making, but it is not sure yet. "Come back in 400 years," said Forecaster Ivan Tannehill. "We'll have all the answers then about sunspots and cycles...