Setup For The Event
An Arctic airmass was in place across the northeast United States; Washington, D.C. had been below freezing since the afternoon of January 23. The front that spawned the cyclone was almost completely dry until after it crossed the Gulf of Mexico, making this storm unique among large southeast snowstorms. Despite the slow start, a low formed and deepened rapidly off the Georgia coast as the cold front reached the Gulf Stream on January 27. Heavy snow quickly developed from the Carolinas to Pennsylvania as the low drifted north to the outer Banks of North Carolina on the 28th. A strong high pressure to the north helped to cut the system off from the jet stream. As a result, the cyclone took three days to move up the Eastern Seaboard, which was double the normal time used by forecasters of that era to move storm systems up the coast. Snow reached Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. by noon on January 28, and continued into the morning of January 29. Temperatures remained in the 20s Fahrenheit (-5 °C) through much of the event.
Read more about this topic: Knickerbocker Storm
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