The
Great Storm of 1975 (also known as the
Super Bowl Blizzard,
Minnesota's Storm of the Century, or the
Tornado Outbreak of January, 1975) was an intense storm system that impacted a large portion of the
Central and
Southeast United States from January 9 to January 12, 1975. The
storm produced 45
tornadoes in the Southeast U.S. resulting in 12 fatalities, while later dropping over of
snow and killing 58 people in the
Midwest. This storm remains one of the worst blizzards to ever strike parts of the Midwest, as well as one of the largest January tornado outbreaks on record in the
United States.
Meteorological synopsis
The storm originated over the
Pacific Ocean and crashed into the Northwest
Pacific coast with damaging gale-force winds on January 8, 1975. By January 9 it had cleared the
Rocky Mountains and began to redevelop and
strengthen. At the same time,
Arctic air was being drawn southward from
Canada into the
Great Plains, and large amounts of warm
tropical air from the
Gulf of Mexico were being pulled northward into much of the
eastern U.S. The storm was a classic
Panhandle Hook which moved from
Colorado into
Oklahoma before turning northward towards the
Upper Midwest. It produced record low
barometric pressure readings in the Midwest, with the pressure falling to an estimated 28.38 in (961 mb) just north of the
Minnesota border in Canada.<ref...
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