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The Weather At Woodstock

By Jesse Ferrell, AccuWeather meteorologist and senior weather editor

Published Aug 17, 2009 1:35 PM EDT

UPDATE: August 17th, 2010: Upon posting this article to the AccuWeather.com Facebook Fans, we found a number of people who were actually there in 1969! Probably the funniest was this one from Paul Liberty: "I was there! it was awesome but the weather sucked! but nobody really cared..we were all having a great time."Check out some of their comments. Were you there? Leave a comment on that link.

Keith Mainwaring: "A lot of people in Bozeman missed it Now they have their very own 'Woodstock* only they call it The Sweet Pea Festival."

Jiminy Cricket: "Yes it was a lot of rain and mud …I stayed behind after everyone left to help clean the real mess, the trash…"

Thomas Longshore: "What a mess that was. The cleanup was monumental."

ORIGINAL BLOG: August 17th, 2009: 40 years ago today, "the greatest concert in history" was wrapping up in Bethel, New York. Nostalgia is in full effect for the anniversary, including a new movie).

What was the weather that fateful weekend? There's not a lot of information out there but I've done some research and come up with a partial reconstruction of what happened. I have noted my most interesting conclusions in

green italicized text.

ANECDOTAL WEATHER DATA:

Clearly, there was some rain; we've all seen the video of people covered in much, sliding down a muddy hill, but how can we quantify that? The amount and veracity of the rain depends on who you ask:

"Three days of consistent rain" -- Woodstock Wiki
"Heavy rain throughout the weekend" / "many thunderstorms that plagued the festival" -- About.com (1 & 2)
"Recent rains had caused muddy roads and fields / during the sometimes rainy weekend" -- WikiPedia
"Sunday... violent thunderstorms wreaked havoc" -- Woodstock.com

What other anecdotal evidence can we find?

First, "Woodstock" didn't actually happen in the more mountainous in Woodstock, NY where a recording studio was originally planned instead... nor did it take place at the original venue near Middletown, NY (due to code issues) -- it took place in north of Bethel, NY at Filippinis Pond.

The best page online with anecdotal details about the weather is this one by "woodstock69poster.com" which lists:

Fri. Aug 15: Rain @ 10:30 PM Friday & overnight
Sat. Aug 16: Drizzle continued in the morning
Sat. Aug 16: Rain or at least still wet @ 4 PM Sat. then sun came out
Sun. Aug 17: "Raining Toads" @ 9:30 PM Sat.
Sun. Aug 17: Sunny then Thunderstorm @ 4:30 PM Sunday
Mon. Aug 18: Sunny Monday 8/18 morning

The "raining toads" comment (if we can assume this was not a drug-induced hallucination) on Saturday night August 17th could indicate that they were within close proximity of a tornado, which have been known to suck up frogs or other small animals from water and deposit them downwind. However the SPC storm reports for that entire weekend show only one wind report in the next county over and no tornado reports.

X = Approximate Location of the Festival

About 100 minutes into the "Woodstock" documentary (which is fascinating if you haven't seen it), there is some great footage of winds, rain and dark clouds (presumably the Sunday thunderstorm) overtaking the concert, which cause the MC to repeatedly warn people to "get away from the towers" as (presumably) the gust front winds become quite strong (some people were also perched atop the tower, at night for aiming of the concert lights, but apparently during the day too, possibly for recreational purposes).

Someone interviewed for the History Channel's documentary 'Woodstock Then & Now' said "There was a horrible horrible feeling that one of these giant towers would come down."

Meanwhile, the bands and techs attempt to Saran Wrap or otherwise tarp over the equipment. This photo is the only one I could find showing an approaching thunderstorm gust front (the photographer declined to comment on the photo when e-mailed). After this heavy Sunday thunderstorm we see in the documentary the famous video of people sliding down the hill in mud was shot.

As the reporter in the video continues to watch the wet crowd, a couple of people walking through the crowd ask the reporter "why the fascist pigs are seeding the clouds" (causing it to rain on the concert). They claimed they saw the planes "with smoke" fly over the concert and that this was the "second time" during the concert that it had happened. You can see this footage on YouTube. This is also mentioned (without citation) on the WikiPedia Cloud Seeding page.

I'm no expert on cloud seeding but I find the conspiracy theory on cloud seeding at Woodstock tough to swallow.

The planes should have been upwind of the festival, probably too far away to see (seeding over the festival would only cause rain to the northeast of its location, based on the upper-level wind patterns that day).

OFFICIAL WEATHER DATA:

Well those are the stories, what about official weather data? Unfortunately, the state of weather radar and satellites at that time was 1.) poor and 2.) not archived. So we look to the (hand-drawn) weather maps for that weekend, which show the area in a "fair weather" pattern, not affected by fronts or low-pressure systems. Also on the map, however, is catastrophic Hurricane Camille was making landfall Sunday night in southern Mississippi;

the Hurricane probably stole some of the news media's attention that might have been covering Woodstock.

In fact it caused a "wow signal" notation in the map below by whoever archived and scanned the paper maps for NOAA:

The accumulated rainfall maps show rain reports to the west in northeastern Pennsylvania but stations were so sparse back then the records are not terribly useful, given how much rain can vary over a small area (see below). The one interesting thing we can glean from them is that the area was on the northeastern fringe of the rain that weekend, and

had Woodstock been held in Woodstock (as people assume it was) or possibly Middletown (as originally planned) the weather could have been drier and the heavy Sunday thunderstorm that caused the "mud slides" video (and exacerbated the health/trash problems) might have not happened at all.

But there were (and this is amazing given that it was 40 years ago) three weather stations operating near the festival:

KMSV (Sullivan County International / Monticello, NY) is the closest, and (by some miracle) had just started operation in July 1969. I was able to obtain the paper observations for Sunday 8/17 thanks to William Schmitz, Service Climatologist/Meteorologist with the NOAA Southeast Regional Climate Center (Twitter). Unfortunately, this doesn't give us a lot of information - the obs were "FINO" (not filed) from 10:00 AM until 4:30 PM, when light rain was reported, add some ground fog at 5:00. Temperatures were at 80 at 10 AM but had fallen to 68 after the rain.

Interestingly, the Sunday thunderstorm is not mentioned so there is no official weather record of it. It's hard to believe that if it was thundering at the festival that they wouldn't have at least heard it and made a note of it at the airport, but the official observations only came out every half hour so either the thunderstorm and heavy rain hit the airport in-between observations or the thunderstorm was dying out as it moved over the festival and was mostly gone by the time it reached the airport (they didn't report any wind either). But this quote from the 'Woodstock: Then & Now' documetary supports the idea that the storm contained lightning, at least during its approach: "A guy was caught in the scaffolding not being able to get down while lightning is striking in the background."

Nearby "CO-OP" stations which were operating at the time include LIBBERTY 1 NE and MONGAUP VALLEY 4 SSW. Those stations show the following records for rainfall -- thanks again to William.

LIBERTY 1 NE:

8/15: 0.00" Rain (Friday) 8/16: 0.04" Rain (Saturday) 8/17: 1.00" Rain (Sunday) 8/18: 0.33" Rain (Monday)

MONGAUP VALLEY 4 SSW:

8/15: 0.12" Rain 8/16: 0.19" Rain 8/17: 0.05" Rain 8/18: 0.00" Rain

These records are a great example of how rainfall can vary greatly over a short distance. As we saw above, there was a major thunderstorm that hit Woodstock on Sunday, and it's obvious from this data that the storm also covered Liberty to the northeast (which matches the upper-level storm-steering currents that day), but not Mongaup Valley to the southeast of the festival.

Someone in 'Woodstock: Then & Now' was quoted as saying: "It rained probably an inch or two in the space of an hour or so." which, if true, matches the Liberty readings. However, someone else in the documentary was quoted as saying "Big black clouds came from the Northwest" which is somewhat confusing, but could only mean that a line of storms was moving southeast and faded before getting to Monticello or Mongaup Valley as illustrated on the map above.

The data shows above roughly matches the anecdotal list supplied by Woodstock69poster.com, but it doesn't substantiate the "days of consistent rain" or "many thunderstorms" quotes mentioned above. In fact, I can't find evidence of a thunderstorm outside of the big one that hit on Sunday, sparking the famous video of the "mudslides." That doesn't mean there wasn't more thunder; it just means we don't have the data to prove it.

Given the number of people in the open field and the tall stature of the concert towers, I think it's fortunate no one and nothing was struck by lightning!

As far as temperatures, Liberty indicated the following lows & highs:

8/15: 54/80
8/16: 58/82
8/17: 63/80
8/18: 64/79

Those daytime temps are too bad for the middle of summer, but

the nighttime readings in the 50s could have been chilly for those waiting to get into the event Friday morning, and for those who were wet from the rain Friday night and Saturday morning.

Even with the Sunday storm, when the Moniticello observations show the temperature dropping to 68, "Woodstock: Then & Now" quotes someone saying "That moment became some kind of an equilizer. We were all cold, and we were all wet.".

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON WOODSTOCK: - WoodStockStory.com - 1969 Woodstock Festival & Concert - The Bethel Woods Art Center

P.Sl: Mom & Dad were hippies, so that probably had something to do with my interest in writing this article. In any case, PEACE!

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Jesse Ferrell

AccuWeather Meteorologist and Social Media Manager Jesse Ferrell covers extreme weather and the intersection of meteorology and social media.

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