The Weather At Woodstock

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

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).

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.

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;

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

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

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.

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.

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

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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