The Blizzard of '66

January 28 to February 1, 1966 · Category 4, Crippling in the Northeast

This blizzard brought a large area of heavy snow from central Arkansas all the way up through Maine registering as a Cat 4 in the Northeast Region, a Cat 3 in the Southeast Region, and a Cat 1 in the South and Ohio Valley Regions. The hardest hit areas were where “lake- effect” combined with the storm to produce record snowfall accumulations. The eastern and southern shores of Lake Ontario felt the brunt of the storm with accumulations ranging from 39 inches in Syracuse up to 100 inches next to the lake. This storm also brought strong winds in excess of 50 mph causing widespread blizzard conditions. (Kocin and Uccellini)

The storm by region

Each region’s thresholds are its own, so the same depth of snow counts for more in the South than in the Northeast.

Region	Index	Category	Area with snow (sq mi)	People under snow	Above the top threshold (sq mi)	People above it
Northeast	12.28	Category 4, Crippling	174,940	58,902,827	3,046	611,484
Southeast	9.63	Category 3, Major	162,149	30,590,900	1,451	1,615,960
Ohio Valley	1.63	Category 1, Notable	246,851	44,018,269	0	0
South	1.45	Category 1, Notable	243,632	18,770,268	0	0
Upper Midwest	0.17	Below category 1	105,950	14,521,781	0	0

The Regional Snowfall Index is NOAA’s ranking of snowstorms east of the Rockies by how much snow fell, over how wide an area and on how many people, region by region: the area and the population above four snowfall thresholds set for each region, weighted against that region’s own history. A storm is scored in each region it reached, on a scale from 1, notable, to 5, extreme.

In the Storm Events record

The Storm Events Database holds winter weather only from 1996, so this storm has no episodes there.

The snowstorm of January 25 to 28, 1966 The snowstorm of February 21 to 24, 1966 Snow now Every winter storm filed

Sources

NOAA NCEI Regional Snowfall Index, and the Storm Events Database for the episodes.