The Great Snowstorm of 1944 was a disruptive winter storm that brought high winds and between of snow to the eastern Great Lakes region of North America between Sunday, December 10, and Wednesday, December 13, 1944. The areas most affected included northeastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, upstate New York, southern Ontario and southern Quebec.
The snowstorm was caused when two separate storms, one from the west, which had dropped moderate amounts of snow through the Central Great Plains and Midwest of the United States, and another from the southern Atlantic Coast, both moved towards Pennsylvania, causing high snowfall amounts and high winds in the adjacent states and provinces, before both moved easterly through New England and then into the Atlantic Ocean. Other effects of the twin-pronged storm, such as cold temperatures, high winds, light snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain, covered the remainder of the eastern United States and southern central Canada.
Including the toll from the western storm, the death toll was between 87 and 100 people in the US and between 21 and 24 people in Canada, with an unknown total of serious injuries. The most heavily impacted major cities included: Toronto with of snow; Hamilton, Ontario, with ; Pittsburgh with ; and Rochester with ; while smaller cities with the greatest snowfalls included St. Catharines, Ontario, with and Erie, Pennsylvania, with .
The storm was crippling to these urban areas such that most car, truck, streetcar and bus transport was blocked for a full day and hindered for three to five days, while stores, government offices and factories were closed for one to two days, and schools were closed for two to three days or longer. In some rural areas nearby these cities, people were snowbound to varying degrees for up to five or six days. Intercity travel by road, bus or air was blocked for two to three days and train travel was blocked or subject to long delays for one to two days. The single highest snowfall was recorded in Elkins in Randolf County, West Virginia, which received , with other mountainous areas of that state receiving about .
Meteorological history
One low pressure system/storm had formed late on December 8 in the southern High Plains and, drawing in cold air from the north, slowly moved northeastward producing snowfall over a large area, including as far south as the northern portions of some Gulf States. States receiving substantial snowfalls included Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, southern Wisconsin, Kentucky, Indiana and southern Michigan. A smaller low pressure system/storm, containing warm moist air, formed along the southern Atlantic Coast late on December 10 and unexpectedly moved northward towards Pennsylvania on December 11, slowing down the storm from the west and bringing additional moisture, thereby increasing snowfall amounts in the adjacent states and provinces in the eastern Great Lakes Region plus southward along the spine of the Appalachian Mountains.
Cities such as Pittsburgh and Toronto were expecting four or five inches of snow but instead received four to five times that amount, leading Pittsburghers to call it the "sneak" snowstorm. Winds whipped snow into drifts and impeded traffic considerably over much of the affected areas. On December 12, the storms moved northeasterly to northern Maine leaving snow across much of their wake with the highest amounts being in northeastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, western, central and northern New York, southern Ontario and southern Quebec. The East Coast received winds gusting to 73 miles per hour (118 kilometres per hour) along with precipitation ranging from a light slush in Washington to freezing rain in parts of New England. The temperatures in the area of greatest snowfall were about normal, but substantially colder than normal temperatures were experienced throughout the southeastern United States, such that of snowfall fell in North Carolina, light snowfall occurred in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, and citrus crops were threatened in central Florida.
Overall impact
The societal impact of the Great Snowstorm was assessed by the National Weather Service of the US as having Regional Snowfall Index (RSI) value of 9.504 in the Ohio Valley Region and 2.155 on the Northeast Region, while its two initiating storm systems had an RSI of 1.784 on the Upper Midwest and 1.989 on the Southeast. The ranking in the Ohio Valley Region labels it as a Category 3 ("Major") snowstorm while the rankings in the other three regions were as a Category 1 ("Notable") snowstorm. The total RSI of the storm is 15.3 which would rank it as a Category 4 ("Crippling") Snowstorm, the second highest category after Category 5 ("Extreme"), and place it seventh all-time in the RSIs for snowstorms in the Northeast. As well, the area of snowfall of or greater affected more people than all snowstorms in the Ohio Valley Region between 1932 and 1967 aside from the Great Appalachian Storm of November 1950.
The impacts of the snowstorm on southern Ontario and southern Quebec in Canada are not accounted for in the U.S. National Weather Service's RSI. The snowfall received by downtown Toronto and surrounding areas is the highest from any storm since 1872 and among the highest in history for most other cities in the Golden Horseshoe at the western end of Lake Ontario, although other winter storms are considered to have had a greater impact on southwestern Ontario (see Great Blizzard of 1978), eastern Ontario and the southern portions of the Niagara Peninsula (see Blizzard of 1977), and the Blizzard of 1999, together with snowstorms which affected Toronto over the following 14 days, may have had a greater accumulative impact on Toronto.
Fatalities and injuries
Final tallies of fatalities from the combined storm system ranged from 87 to 100 for the US and 21 to 24 for Canada, all of Canada's being in southern Ontario. The deaths in the US occurred in at least 16 states from Colorado in the west and Arkansas in the south, to Maine in the northeast, with Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and Michigan having the greatest number.
The exact causes of death in the Midwest and Great Plains states (Indiana and westward) were predominantly vehicular accidents, whereas for Michigan about half of the fatalities were on account of vehicular accidents. For Ohio, southern Ontario, western Pennsylvania and western New York, the areas which had the quickest snowfall and, generally, the highest snowfall—which resulted in roads that were largely physically undriveable until they were properly plowed—causes aside from vehicular accidents were prevalent, these including: heart attacks from exhaustion from struggling to walk through snow drifts in blizzard conditions, or from shovelling or pushing cars out of snow drifts or from the stress of a car being stuck in the snow, or from shovelling in general; sledding ("coasting") accidents, including colliding with moving vehicles; vehicles hitting pedestrians, who in some cases were walking on roads as sidewalks were unwalkable; a streetcar overturning; exposure to the cold; electrocution by wires that fell due to high winds; and, death from traumatic, delayed child birth (see the below sections for these four jurisdictions for details on fatalities and references). In the 21st century, some of these, such as shovelling not involving a trapped car or sledding, are classified by some sources as "indirect" rather than "direct" deaths from a snowstorm.
Numerous injuries from causes similar to the fatalities, plus from falls, were reported in various newspapers, but only for Toronto was a tablulation reported, which was of about 100 serious injuries, including 54 fracture cases, for the 30 hours of the storm. In Pittsburgh, in the 24 hours at the height of the snowstorm, severe injuries reported (i.e. fractures and internal injuries) included six people when a trolley hit a transport truck, a bus driver in a collision, four workers or pedestrians hit by vehicles, one person from a fall, and three youngsters from sledding accidents. Amongst cities impacted by the western storm, Chicago reported "scores of injuries from falls", including one cracked skull, and two severe injuries from a car-subway train collision, in one 24-hour period from December 10 to 11, during which time four deaths also occurred. In St. Louis, a major hospital reported 30 people had required treatment for injuries suffered from falls on icy sidewalks or roads in one 24-hour period, and in a second 24-hour period, six severe fracture cases from falls, including a skull fracture (which resulted in death), were reported.
Impacts on most affected areas
Ohio
While Cincinnati and Toledo received of snow, respectively, from the storm on December 11, snowfalls rose to in Cleveland, in Akron and in Youngstown in the northeast of the state where the snow carried over into December 12. winds created blizzard conditions in some areas and blew the snow into high drifts which completely blocked many major highways for one to two days and secondary highways for two or three days. Near the northwest town of Waterville, 50 vehicles, including trucks, buses and private automobiles, were stranded in one section of highway. Intercity bus transportation was halted for two days, with reported banks blocking buses from Cincinnati from reaching Columbus and a State Highway Official stating much of their road-clearing equipment had been damaged by futile attempts to remove such high drifts.
Most trucking lines were brought to a standstill, with one company indicating 180 of their trucks were either stuck in snow near or waiting in Akron until they could proceed. In Akron, 110 of the city's 131 buses were mired in snow drifts at one point on December 12 and taxi companies pulled their cars from the road at 1 p.m. that day; bus service did return to 90% until late December 13. Towing companies estimated to callers that there was a seven-hour wait to tow cars, chiefly because many of their tow trucks had themselves gotten stuck in the snow; with so many people stranded downtown, people stormed hotel desks to get rooms for the night.
Trains arriving in Ohio cities were between two and twelve hours late on December 12 and many were late on December 13 as well. Air travel from northeastern Ohio airports, such as Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown, was halted for December 12 and part of December 13, and the Cleveland evening newspapers did not publish their late editions for December 12. Several major war plants were shut down for December 12, including those in Youngstown, Sandusky and Chillicothe, and electricity and telephone communication were out in numerous counties. Twelve people were killed in Ohio on account of the storm, specific causes including heart attacks from pushing vehicles out of snow drifts or the stress of being mired in snow drifts, pedestrians being hit by skidding motor vehicles, being an occupant of crashing vehicles, and electrocution (one person).
Pennsylvania