Hey, y’all. It’s Amie.

Damage caused by Hurricane Camille. (NOAA/Wikimedia Commons)

By Stacker

Here’s what you need to know: Stacker consulted historical, climatologic, and other news sources to find the most notable weather events since the Great Depression.

Our top picks:

• Though Hurricane Camille first formed off the west coast of Africa, it became a dangerous tropical storm near Jamaica in August 1969. The hurricane made landfall in Mississippi with 175 mph winds and a 24-foot storm surge. The storm turned northward, battering the southeast and mid-Atlantic regions before returning to the ocean off the coast of Virginia.

• When the mid-Atlantic region was hit by a giant snowstorm on Feb. 5-6, 2010, everything in Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia, and the surrounding areas came to a halt. Schools closed, flights were grounded, and the federal government shuttered its DC operations while the city was peppered with three feet of snow.
• While not technically in the commonwealth, the Ohio River flood of 1937 devastated cities along the waterway in neighboring states including Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky. During the January flood, entire sections of Huntington, Louisville, and other large cities were underwater. 

Want more weird weather? We’ve got records from 1930 to 2022 at the link below. 

Virginia is home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers, many clustered in Ashburn.⁣

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As extreme heat drives up electricity demand, officials can now require major power users, including AI data centers, to switch to backup generators to help prevent blackouts.

Two handwritten journals from the 1800s provide weather reports. The one to the upper left, written by an unknown narrator, reads: “In bed lame. Walter and wife to Fort [are] home tonight. Stormy Day.” The lower journal penned by Ellen Menafe reads: “The wind is blowing hard and it is quite cool.” (Amie Knowles/Dogwood)

By Amie Knowles

Speaking of weather records, I noticed a trend in several old diaries I own. Two of the ones I could easily access for today’s picture were those of Ellen Menafe who lived on Market Street in Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1869, and another 1884 journal from an unidentified narrator from somewhere cold.

How do I know the latter part? Because nearly every single day, the author wrote just how blooming cold it was where they lived—and not much else, beyond who came to visit. 

Ellen’s diary is far more fascinating. She took pencil to paper nearly every day until mid-June, providing a daily weather report and often telling about life in the relatively newly-formed state. Recall, Wheeling was originally part of Virginia until June 20, 1863, when the territory officially became the 35th state in the Union, a shift proclaimed by President Abraham Lincoln himself during the American Civil War.

In one of her last regular entries, Ellen conveniently stuck right with the weather theme. On June 16, 1869, she wrote, “Showery, but very warm.” Fear not—our weather hero was right back with this report on Sept. 1: “Hot enough to roast one, and 14 men to cook for.” 

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