Harrison, Taft, Obama?
The Nat'l Weather Service released its first detailed forecast for Inauguration Day this afternoon, and it includes -- drumroll, please -- the chance of snow. The weather service is predicting a mostly cloudy day with a 30% chance of snow. Daytime highs will top out in the lower 30s.
The weather service is typically vague more than four or five days in advance due to wide variations in long-term projections, and their operational forecast discussion this p.m. reflects that philosophy: "Below normal temperatures are expected for Tuesday as well. Another disturbance will bringing (sic) the chance for snow. The exact timing and track of this disturbance remains uncertain this far out."
Still, even the prospect of snow is likely to send DC and fed. agencies scrambling. What to do with the estimated 2M to 4M people expected to make the pilgrimage to Washington for Pres.-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony?
If significant snow does fall, it would not be the first time the inauguration was impacted by adverse weather conditions.
When the 20th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1933, Inauguration Day was moved from 3/4 to 1/20, a date on which the DC-area often sees its coldest weather of the year. Inauguration Day, whether in March or January, has occasionally seen active weather that has dramatically affected the proceedings.
On 3/4/1841, William Henry Harrison was sworn into office on a cloudy, cold and blustery day with a noon temperature estimated at 48 degrees by the Weather Service. His speech lasted one hour and 40 minutes, and he rode a horse to and from the Capitol without a hat or overcoat. He developed pneumonia from a lingering cold he caught that day, and he passed away a month later.
Twelve years later, in 1853, Abigail Fillmore would befall a similar fate as she caught a cold during the inauguration of Franklin Pierce. Twas a snowy, 35-degree March day. Mrs. Fillmore passed away later that month.
But 3/4/1873 remains the coldest March day in Washington since the Weather Service began keeping records in 1871. During the day, bitter winds gusted up to 40 mph. By noon, the temperature had risen to 16 degrees, but, with the wind chill, it felt like between -15 and -30 degrees. Cadets and midshipmen had been standing on the mall for more than an hour and a half without overcoats, causing several of them to collapse. When Ulysses S. Grant delivered his inaugural address, the wind made his words inaudible to even those on the platform with him. The inaugural ball that evening was held in a temporary building without heat. It had to be halted at midnight so people, who had been dancing in their overcoats and heavy wraps, could go home to get warm.
The snowiest inaugural was held on 3/4/1909, when 10 inches of snow fell. The storm wrapped as William Howard Taft was sworn into office.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in '37, became the first president to be inaugurated after the ratification of the 20th Amendment. In just two hours between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., 0.69 inches of rain fell with temperatures barely hovering around freezing. It is said that 200K people descended upon DC for the festivities, though several thousand never got farther than Union Station. At FDR's insistence, he rode back to the White House in an open car with a half an inch of water on the floor. Total rainfall for the day was 1.77 inches, which still stands as the most rain Washington has received on any 1/20 since record-keeping began.
John F. Kennedy's inauguration in '61 was disrupted by a snowstorm that took forecasters by surprise. The Nat'l Weather Service had predicted rain the afternoon and evening of the 1/19 would change to snow before ending early in the morning. But temperatures fell as the precipitation began, and it stayed all snow. It was 22 degrees with a cold, bitter wind as JFK took the oath of office. As the National Weather Service describes:
8 inches of snow fell and caused the most crippling traffic jam (for its time). Hundreds of cars were marooned and thousands of cars were abandoned. ... Former President Herbert Hoover was unable to fly into Washington National Airport due to the weather and he had to miss the swearing-in ceremony.
No one could speak to the variability of DC weather, however, like Ronald Reagan. For Reagan's first inauguration in '81, it was a balmy 55 degrees under mostly cloudy skies. But, four years later, 1/21/1985 (1/20 was a Sun.), it was just 7 degrees at noon; Reagan took his oath inside the Capitol Rotunda to escape the cold. As a result of wind chills between -10 and -20 degrees during the afternoon, the inaugural parade was canceled.
Obama's inaugural snow predication doesn't seem to presage a storm like the one in '61, but it at least raises the possibility that weather could impact, in some way, this much anticipated quadrennial celebration.
(STEVEN SHEPARD)