Remembering The Most Extreme January: Fatal Snows And Floods, January, 1996

The weather map on January 18, 1996. An intense storm 
centered near Wisconsin was already starting to drawn
record warmth into the eastern United States, By the
time the storm's cold front arrived the next day,
the winter heat and torrential rains immediately
melted deep snow, resulting in one of the
region's worst floods on record. 

Overall, this January so far in Vermont hasn't been that wild. We haven't had any record temperatures. It's been stormy, but not overly so. 

It's quite a contrast to exactly 30 years ago. 

January, 1996 is easily one of the most extreme weather months I can remember, here in Vermont and for pretty much everywhere else in the Northeast.

The month gave us everything. Deep snows, record cold, then record warmth and torrential rains, and widespread tragic flooding. Both in Vermont and throughout the Northeast. 

The month opened cold.  The low temperature in Burlington on January 6, 1996 was 23 below. It hasn't been that cold since. Down in Rutland, it was 29 below. Over in Island Pond, it got as cold as 32 below.

THE BIG SNOW

As those temperatures froze Vermont solid, a storm was lurking further down the East Coast. The storm would ultimately mostly miss the Green Mountain State, but make snowy history from southern New England to North Carolina. 

On January 7-8, a broad area from southwestern Virginia to southern New England were buried beneath 20 to 30 inches of snow. Some parts of eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and West Virginia had more than 30 inches. A couple spots in West Virginia reported 48 inches. 

Philadelphia had 31 inches of new snow, easily its largest snowstorm on record.  Baltimore clocked in with 27 inches. New York's Central Park, had 21 inches. 

High winds whipped the snow into five to eight foot drifts. Travel was impossible in the urban corridor stretching from Washington DC to Boston. The storm contributed to 60 deaths and caused $500 million in insured losses. That's 1996 dollars. In 2026 dollars, it's a little over $1 billion.  

Another smaller, but still substantial storm hit the Mid-Atlantic States on January 12, adding to the deep snowpack. 

Hagerstown, Maryland had 34.7 during the January 7-8, 1996 blizzard with a water content of 2.82 inches. Another snowstorm on January 12 left an additional water content of 0.69 inches. That was a lot of water ready for what would happen next.

Up here in Vermont, though that big blizzard missed. A few inches of snow dusted the far southern end of the state, but that's about it.

Nevertheless, we were pretty much buried in snow, too.  December in the Green Mountain State was among the snowiest on record.  Both Burlington and Montpelier had nearly four feet of snow in the last month of 1995. There were pretty much no thaws between early December, 1995 and mid-January, 1996. Much of the state had more than two feet of snow on the ground by mid-January.

The water content of that snow was quite high. I can remember pine trees and forests sagging dangerously under the weight of the snow in late December and early January that winter. 

Throughout the Northeast, the water locked in the snowpack amounted the equivalent of two to five inches of rain. Here and up and down the ridges in the Northeast. 

Then the weather made a complete and dramatic turnaround, with horrific results. 

HEAT WAVE/FLOOD

An intense storm on January 18 moved up through the central Plains into the western Great Lakes. A major blizzard struck west of the storm track.

In the Plains states, in places like Nebraska, the wind was strong enough to blow out store windows, damage grain bins, snap trees and cut power. On the east side of the storm a broad, deep flow of warm, humid air pulled direct from the Gulf of Mexico. 

Temperatures throughout the northeast rose into the mid 50s to upper 60s. The humidity was around 90 percent. The higher the humidity,, the more rapid the snowmelt.

As AccuWeather describes the event, some Pennsylvania residents went to bed on January 18 with over a foot of snow on the ground and waking up on the 19th to find bare ground.   

Then on the 19th, the storm's strong cold front began moving into the Northeast. It wrung out the moisture in that warm, humid air, dumping 1 to 3 inches of rain, with locally higher amounts. Almost all the rain came within a six-hour period in any given location, so the runoff was intense. 

The Delaware River reached its highest state since Hurricanes Connie and Diane in 1955. The Hudson River reached its highest level since 1977. The Ohio River at Pittsburgh, the Susquehanna River at Wilkes-Barre and the Potomac River at Little Falls, Virginia crested at its highest level since the epic Hurricane Agnes floods of 1972, notes the National Weather Service.

Countless small streams and rivers blasted down slopes in the central and northern Appalachians. 

The Allegheny and Monongahela rivers converge in Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River. Flood crests from the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers reached Pittsburgh at the same time, resulting in one the highest and one of the fastest flood crests in that city's history. 

People who parked their cars on streets well above water in the morning found them submerged in the afternoon.  

The floods claimed 33 lives and caused $1.5 billion in 1996 dollars, which is nearly $3.2 billion in today's dollars

In Pennsylvania's Susquehanna River Basin alone, there were 14 deaths and more than half a million dollars in damage. Ten deaths occurred in New York, mostly in and near the Catskills. . 

 VERMONT FLOOD

Temperatures on January 18 and especially the 19th soared to record levels across Vermont.   Burlington's temperature rose to 65 degrees, which would have been a record for the entire month of January had the record of 66 degrees not been set almost exactly a year earlier.

St. Johnsbury and Rutland reached 60 degrees, St. Albans reached 62 degrees. 

Water in Vermont's rivers were running high and beginning to flood in some areas by early afternoon, January 19.  Snow that had been one to more than 2.5 feet deep was down to a few inches by mid-afternoon of the 19th. .

Then, in the late afternoon and evening, the storm's cold front arrived with torrential downpours. Small streams and brooks became torrential the evening darkness. Roads were blocked as smaller rivers, then the main ones, quickly burst their banks. 

The flood turned to tragedy in Franklin County. According to accounts in the Burlington Free Press, David Ryan, 50 was driving with his two teenage daughters on West Street, a rural dirt road in Fairfield. A raging brook caught the car and sent it more than 500 feet downstream. 

Ryan was trapped inside the car. Both teenagers tried to pull their father from the car, but one of them fell into the water and drowned.  The other teenager was somehow able to escape the water and debris and sought help at a nearby home. Ryan was rescued, but his hypothermia was so severe he died two days later. The surviving teen suffered minor injuries. 

In the end 11 of Vermont's 14 counties were declared disaster areas. 

There's surprisingly little information online about the flood in Vermont,  possibly because it was overshadowed by more dramatic and bigger floods in 1997, 2011, 2023 and 2024.

The weather in Vermont finally settled down toward the end of January after a wild few weeks. Another warm rainstorm hit on January 27. More than an inch of rain fell on Burlington. But with little snow left to melt in Vermont, no real flooding hit in this second rainy episode.

The weather in February, 1996 in Vermont was blessedly unremarkable. 

Winters have certainly turned more variable in Vermont under the effects of climate change. We still get strong cold waves, but also springlike warmups. Snow still quickly accumulates, but dissolves in oddly warm nights. 

Winter storms are dumping deeper snows and heavier rains. 

All this is to say that January, 1996 was as extreme a winter month as we've had. But the bad news is, under the influence of climate change, we could have a repeat of January, 1996. Or something even worse.