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Your car becomes snowbound, your flight is delayed or cancelled, and your holiday trip becomes a major hassle. These are issues that you absolutely don’t want to deal with during the busiest travel week of the year. Fortunately, the Thanksgiving holiday is still a bit early in winter for a high frequency of significant winter storms.

But such storms occasionally happen, and a number of them have had a significant negative impact on travelers. Here are a few of them across the eastern U.S. over time.

The Great Appalachian Storm (1950)

This was a very unusual storm with a high impact over several days. Meteorologists studying this storm still find it fascinating.

Commencing on Thanksgiving Day, a severe “blocking” pattern was beginning to develop in the upper atmosphere. Low pressure (aloft and at the surface) developed east of the Appalachians and backed westward through the central Appalachians, while a blocking high pressure dome in the western Atlantic gained strength over the Eastern U.S. The storm system became extremely strong as surface pressures fell dramatically. Temperatures looked “upside down” as mild air progressed westward through northern New England, Quebec and Ontario and backed down across Lake Huron into Michigan. Temperatures were in the 40s from the Mid-Atlantic up through New England and westward through northern New York, southern Canada to Michigan, while Arctic air swept down from the western Great Lakes, through Ohio, to the southern Appalachians.

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The huge storm impacts — heavy snow, heavy rain and damaging wind — commenced on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and continued well into the following week.

Wind and rain hampered travel from New Jersey to New England. Extreme wind gusts reached 110 mph in Concord, N.H.; 100 mph in Hartford, Conn.; and 94 mph in New York City. There was major coastal damage in Connecticut and railroad tracks were washed away.

To the west, the main culprit was snow, and plenty of it. Snowfall totals from 2 to 3 feet stretched from northern Ohio to western Pennsylvania and down through West Virginia. Final snowfall totals reached 31 to 36 inches in the Pittsburgh, Penn., area. Army tanks were used to clear snow away. Steubenville, Ohio, tallied 33.3 inches while Parkersburg, W.Va.,  picked up 34.4 inches. Damage from the storm totaled a whopping $67 million in 1950 dollars.

1971 Thanksgiving Storm

In 1971, a nor’easter tracked north from the Mid-Atlantic to New England on Nov. 24-25 — Wednesday and Thanksgiving day. There was significant snowfall from Pennsylvania, though eastern New York and western New England.

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Hundreds of air, rail and automobile travelers were stranded. Nearly 2 feet of snow was dumped on Scranton, Penn. The 22.5 inches recorded at Albany, N.Y., set a November snowfall record. Some higher elevations near Albany saw up to 30 inches of snow. A general 10 to 20 inches fell across interior sections of New England.

Washington, D.C. residents technically woke up to a “white” Thanksgiving with 1 inch of snow on the ground.

1989 Thanksgiving Day Storm

On Nov. 23, 1989, a powerful storm took a track northward from off the North Carolina Coast to off the New England Coast.  Snow fell from Virginia to New England from late Wednesday into early Thanksgiving Day.

A general area of 4 to 8 inches  blanketed an from New Jersey to New England but some locations on Cape Cod picked up over a foot of snow. The snow was also accompanied by string, gusty winds. Providence, R.I., picked up 8 inches while Strasburg, Conn., totaled 6.5 inches.  Travel became treacherous by the evening before Thanksgiving.

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In New York City, 4.7 inches of snow fell, but it was the winds that put a damper on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The New York Times wrote that the storm prevented “high school football games from being played, horses from running at Aqueduct and Snoopy and Bugs Bunny from making it to the big parade in Manhattan,” thanks to the gusty wind. It was New York City’s first Thanksgiving snowfall in 51 years.

Washington, D.C. got off easy with 1.9 inches but it remains the snowiest Thanksgiving Day on record.

2013 Winter Storm

In 2013 a storm system took a slightly inland track up the East Coast the Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving. As a result, snow fell either side of the Appalachians through interior areas of Pennsylvania to Upstate New York to northern New England. Six to 12 inches of snow was recorded in higher elevations of West Virginia and western Maryland and up through southern and central New York to northern New England. Parts of Northwest Pennsylvania picked up nearly a foot and a half of snow.

2014 Winter Storm

A more significant storm, with greater impacts, occurred in 2014. This storm took a more eastward track than the one in 2013 and the snow fell about 12 hours later. The heaviest snow totals were recorded from the West Virginia-Virginia border area up through eastern Pennsylvania and eastern New York to New England.

Monterrey, Va., picked up 14 inches of snow while 10 inch totals were recorded around Binghamton and Albany, N.Y. Parts of western Massachusetts saw over a foot of snow. The snow was also accompanied by gusty winds. There were over 4,700 airport cancellations and 700 delays. There were widespread power outages in New England (160,000) in New Hampshire alone.

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