AccuWeather reporters reflect on their most memorable weather stories of 2021
From the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast to historic drought and wildfires in the western U.S., several AccuWeather reporters discuss their experiences covering the biggest weather events of the past year.
By
Adriana Navarro, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Dec 29, 2021 3:27 PM EDT
|
Updated Jan 4, 2022 3:41 PM EDT
Over the course of 2021, AccuWeather's team of field reporters traveled across the nation to tell the stories of countless people who found their lives forever changed by the weather. They've captured snapshots of everything from towns scorched by wildfires to bathtub rings around drought-ravaged reservoirs and collections of salvaged photos that nurture hope for an eventual return to normalcy after a disastrous hurricane.
Here's a look back at some of the most memorable images taken during 2021 through the eyes of the field reporters who reported these stories, plus a look at the editors' picks.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP
A few weeks after the Category 4 Hurricane Ida made landfall on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, AccuWeather National Reporter Jillian Angeline met with one of the families impacted in Houma, Louisiana. While more stormy weather threatened the cleanup, any insulation from their home that had survived Ida was wet and laying amid the rest of the wreckage, Angeline said.
A white and blue toy dog was one of the many toys strewn about the debris -- a reminder of happier times held by the family that had lived there. In the background, another toy could be heard singing on repeat when the family had returned following the hurricane.
"Standing there with this family, tears in their eyes, it is these moments I wish there was more I could do," Angeline said. "This is why it's so important to continue to follow up with people impacted by severe weather -- not just in the days following the incident, but in the months and years after because recovery takes time."
Roughly a week earlier, a record-shattering 20.73 inches of rain had fallen in less than 24 hours in Humphreys County, Tennessee, triggering flash flooding that killed at least 20 people. Early estimates had placed the top rainfall total at 17.03 inches in the city of McEwen, but further investigation into measurements at a wastewater treatment plant in McEwen revealed the new record-high total. The measurement of 17.03 inches still stands as the second-highest rainfall total for a single day, according to officials.
A makeshift volunteer resource center in Waverly, Tennessee, a little more than 10 miles west from McEwen, had tables set up with pictures lost during the catastrophic flooding -- another snapshot that stood out to Angeline. A coordinator told her that volunteers found the photos while cleaning up around the town and brought them back for residents to sift through.
"So many years of memories, so many pictures ruined, yet this effort to reunite photos with their rightful owners is so honorable," Angeline said.
Among the most notable images was a collection of sonograms.
"Those sonograms represented new life, and I wondered where the parents were who were missing these first pictures of their child," Angeline said. "Seeing the human toll each disaster takes is so hard to fathom."
As the United States began to gear up for Thanksgiving, a memorable photo came from a calm day along with a message of hope following not only a deadly year of weather but also the second year of the pandemic. The AccuWeather RealFeel® jumped from 45 degrees to 54 as the sun provided some warmth to New York City during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In the two hours before the parade started, Angeline met Havana Pagaja, who said she was most excited about seeing Santa. After the parade started, and with Santa on his way, Angeline took a photo of the Pagaja family as they snapped their own shot in front of the parade.
"After such a difficult two years, this picture represents so much," Angeline said. "It represents a return to some normalcy, it represents the continuation of tradition and it represents the importance of making memories with your loved ones. It’s a powerful message of hope."
The last set of images Angeline highlighted was a nine-second clip of community members fixing what they could of a home in Bayard, Iowa, after an EF2 tornado tore through the area on Dec. 15.
The twister had been a part of the first derecho ever recorded in the U.S. during the month of December, which tore through the heartland. A powerful low-pressure system crossed the country from Colorado to western Lake Superior, tearing down power lines and uprooting trees in its wake. As of Dec. 20, there were at least 23 confirmed tornadoes that touched down in Iowa from the system, 12 of which were rated as EF2, according to the National Weather Service. Before the event, only six tornadoes had been recorded in Iowa during the month of December dating back to 1950. Straight-line wind gusts associated with the storm exceeded 80 mph.
"I couldn't believe how many cars were parked nearby," Angeline said. "So many community members responded in this family's time of need less than 24 hours after the tornado hit the house. It's a testament to people coming together in the face of tragedy."
The house Angeline had passed was one of the many that the storms had severely damaged.
"Seeing this in person really gives you perspective on what's important in life -- life itself and the friends and family surrounding you. The homeowners were in such good spirits, given their situation a little more than a week from Christmas."
Scenes from the Dec. 10-11 tornado outbreak were still fresh as the year drew to a close and the cleanup continued. A few days after the storm had passed, AccuWeather National Reporter Bill Wadell traveled to Mayfield, Kentucky, after an EF4 tornado tore through the small town. The storm had flattened a fire station that had served as the central hub of the local fire department. Next to it lay a tipped-over school bus.
"This storm has been incredibly difficult for families, right before the holidays," Wadell said. "Schools shut down because buildings were damaged and many buses were flipped and mangled."
There had been a small silver lining: Not many people had been out on the roads when the tornado hit. But the days that followed still held heavy heartbreak. The tornadoes claimed at least 89 lives across five states, including 77 in Kentucky alone. But on Dec. 11, nearly 24 hours after the storm, families found themselves with many uncertainties as the sun set. Without electricity, Mayfield grew cold and dark.
"There were only a few pockets of lights from search crews, Kentucky National Guard checkpoints and news crews broadcasting updates and survivor stories from the tight-knit city that felt more like a ghost town," Wadell said.
Hundreds of miles away, residents in Greenville, California, had faced a different disaster to rebuild from. The Dixie Fire burned from mid-July into late October, scorching nearly 1 million acres across the state of California. Greenville was one of the towns in the path of the second-largest fire in the state's history.
"The smoke had cleared, the flames were gone, but the loss was still fresh and painful," Wadell said of his return to the town on Sept. 7, a month after the fire had raced through the community. During his visit, a few families and business owners were still sifting through the rubble, looking for anything that might have survived the flames.
"We’ve sadly become accustomed to wildfires racing through rural areas and torching pockets of homes in recent years, but to see most of a town burn down was difficult to digest," Wadell said. "All that was left of one home was the stone steps leading to a house that burned down to the foundation and garage floor. Even with so many bad memories and the threat of future fires, some families are determined to rebuild their hometown."
In contrast to the other weather events and disasters he had reported on, heat waves and droughts weren't always as visual, Wadell pointed out. However, they still left their mark, from the economic and ecological impacts to the physical bathtub rings around shrinking reservoirs' exposed basins. California's Lake Shasta was one such reservoir he visited on Sept. 29.
"It's difficult to realize how much water had vanished from California's reservoirs this fall, until you made the long walk down to the water and looked up," Wadell said. "There were dozens of bathtub rings along the cracked shorelines showing where the water levels steadily dropped as demand peaked during the hot summer months."
The 2021 storm-chasing season kicked off with a bit of a twist for AccuWeather National Reporter Tony Laubach.
Two hours after Dania Laubach and her husband had closed on their house in Milliken, Colorado, she looked over her shoulder to see a stunning sight: a twister arching from the sky a few miles off.
In the middle of moving their mattress into their newly purchased home, the two pulled it inside as quickly as possible before running to close all of the doors and windows. Once the home was as secure as it could be with a tornado looming in the distance and armed with only their phone cameras, the Laubachs began the chase.
"Personally, this was an omen to me as a storm chaser," Laubach said. "[It] was a battle over the last several years to get to this point, and to see it come full circle in a manner such as this was particularly impactful."
Tony has been a storm chaser for more than 20 years and has seen hundreds of tornadoes, but this was the first to have an impact so close to home. As for Dania, this was both her first chase and her first time seeing a tornado despite the couple having previously lived in Kansas.
“It started off really spindly and really cute, and then it got really big and mean at the end," Dania said. "There was a mini-tornado inside or you could see the funnel. I don’t know all the terminology, but it was really beautiful and I was honored to see my first tornado with my husband.”
Nobody was injured from the tornado, but the National Weather Service reported that livestock had been killed. It did, however, damage numerous farms. The twister reportedly covered 14 miles and did not approach the Laubachs' home.
With a track that stretched from New Orleans to New England, Hurricane Ida impacted millions. Photos that surfaced from Louisiana, Tennessee and New York captured the damage from the storm and emotional toll in a way that words could not fully describe.
In Houma, Reuters showed Theophilus Charles sitting on his heavily damaged home after the hurricane had made landfall. He told the news organization that he had lost everything -- his home, clothes, furniture, appliances -- all had been lost to the storm. His sister, Tomika Patterson, set up a GoFundMe page for him after people saw his photo circulating in the news. It has since closed, but not before raising over $7,500. After hearing about Charles' story, Shawna Fuller set up a second GoFundMe on behalf of Patterson. The page raised an additional $1,000.
Over 1,000 miles from where Ida made landfall, the former hurricane dumped heavy rainfall over the Northeast in September as a tropical rainstorm. For the first time ever, the National Weather Service office in New York City issued a flash flood emergency on the evening of Sept. 1, covering northeastern New Jersey, followed shortly after by the office's second-ever flash flood emergency. This time the alert was for New York City itself. Within one hour, Central Park was deluged with 3.15 inches of rainfall from 8:51 to 9:51 p.m., local time.
The death toll began to mount as stormwater cascaded into basement apartments, trapping many people. Danny Hong had been in such an apartment as Ida swept into the region. The water came up to his neck in his apartment in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens in New York City. Both Hong and his wife survived, but more than 52 people in the Northeast lost their lives due to the storm.
Across the nation, months earlier, a man in Casper, Wyoming, found himself chest-deep in snow after eastern Wyoming received "anomalously high" snowfall totals near Casper Mountain the weekend of March 13-15. Saturday brought snowfall rates of 2 to 3 inches per hour at times, which continued into that Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. At one point, starting at 6 a.m., local time, Sunday, 14 inches of snow fell within six hours at the Casper International Airport. At the National Weather Service office in Cheyenne, 10 inches of snow fell from midnight until 6 a.m., local time, Sunday.
For the latest weather news check back on AccuWeather.com. Watch the AccuWeather Network on DIRECTV, Frontier, Spectrum, fuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios. AccuWeather Now is now available on your preferred streaming platform
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News / Weather News
AccuWeather reporters reflect on their most memorable weather stories of 2021
From the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast to historic drought and wildfires in the western U.S., several AccuWeather reporters discuss their experiences covering the biggest weather events of the past year.
By Adriana Navarro, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Dec 29, 2021 3:27 PM EDT | Updated Jan 4, 2022 3:41 PM EDT
Over the course of 2021, AccuWeather's team of field reporters traveled across the nation to tell the stories of countless people who found their lives forever changed by the weather. They've captured snapshots of everything from towns scorched by wildfires to bathtub rings around drought-ravaged reservoirs and collections of salvaged photos that nurture hope for an eventual return to normalcy after a disastrous hurricane.
Here's a look back at some of the most memorable images taken during 2021 through the eyes of the field reporters who reported these stories, plus a look at the editors' picks.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP
Jillian Angeline
A few weeks after the Category 4 Hurricane Ida made landfall on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, AccuWeather National Reporter Jillian Angeline met with one of the families impacted in Houma, Louisiana. While more stormy weather threatened the cleanup, any insulation from their home that had survived Ida was wet and laying amid the rest of the wreckage, Angeline said.
A white and blue toy dog was one of the many toys strewn about the debris -- a reminder of happier times held by the family that had lived there. In the background, another toy could be heard singing on repeat when the family had returned following the hurricane.
"Standing there with this family, tears in their eyes, it is these moments I wish there was more I could do," Angeline said. "This is why it's so important to continue to follow up with people impacted by severe weather -- not just in the days following the incident, but in the months and years after because recovery takes time."
Roughly a week earlier, a record-shattering 20.73 inches of rain had fallen in less than 24 hours in Humphreys County, Tennessee, triggering flash flooding that killed at least 20 people. Early estimates had placed the top rainfall total at 17.03 inches in the city of McEwen, but further investigation into measurements at a wastewater treatment plant in McEwen revealed the new record-high total. The measurement of 17.03 inches still stands as the second-highest rainfall total for a single day, according to officials.
A makeshift volunteer resource center in Waverly, Tennessee, a little more than 10 miles west from McEwen, had tables set up with pictures lost during the catastrophic flooding -- another snapshot that stood out to Angeline. A coordinator told her that volunteers found the photos while cleaning up around the town and brought them back for residents to sift through.
"So many years of memories, so many pictures ruined, yet this effort to reunite photos with their rightful owners is so honorable," Angeline said.
Among the most notable images was a collection of sonograms.
"Those sonograms represented new life, and I wondered where the parents were who were missing these first pictures of their child," Angeline said. "Seeing the human toll each disaster takes is so hard to fathom."
As the United States began to gear up for Thanksgiving, a memorable photo came from a calm day along with a message of hope following not only a deadly year of weather but also the second year of the pandemic. The AccuWeather RealFeel® jumped from 45 degrees to 54 as the sun provided some warmth to New York City during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In the two hours before the parade started, Angeline met Havana Pagaja, who said she was most excited about seeing Santa. After the parade started, and with Santa on his way, Angeline took a photo of the Pagaja family as they snapped their own shot in front of the parade.
"After such a difficult two years, this picture represents so much," Angeline said. "It represents a return to some normalcy, it represents the continuation of tradition and it represents the importance of making memories with your loved ones. It’s a powerful message of hope."
The last set of images Angeline highlighted was a nine-second clip of community members fixing what they could of a home in Bayard, Iowa, after an EF2 tornado tore through the area on Dec. 15.
The twister had been a part of the first derecho ever recorded in the U.S. during the month of December, which tore through the heartland. A powerful low-pressure system crossed the country from Colorado to western Lake Superior, tearing down power lines and uprooting trees in its wake. As of Dec. 20, there were at least 23 confirmed tornadoes that touched down in Iowa from the system, 12 of which were rated as EF2, according to the National Weather Service. Before the event, only six tornadoes had been recorded in Iowa during the month of December dating back to 1950. Straight-line wind gusts associated with the storm exceeded 80 mph.
"I couldn't believe how many cars were parked nearby," Angeline said. "So many community members responded in this family's time of need less than 24 hours after the tornado hit the house. It's a testament to people coming together in the face of tragedy."
The house Angeline had passed was one of the many that the storms had severely damaged.
"Seeing this in person really gives you perspective on what's important in life -- life itself and the friends and family surrounding you. The homeowners were in such good spirits, given their situation a little more than a week from Christmas."
Bill Wadell
Scenes from the Dec. 10-11 tornado outbreak were still fresh as the year drew to a close and the cleanup continued. A few days after the storm had passed, AccuWeather National Reporter Bill Wadell traveled to Mayfield, Kentucky, after an EF4 tornado tore through the small town. The storm had flattened a fire station that had served as the central hub of the local fire department. Next to it lay a tipped-over school bus.
"This storm has been incredibly difficult for families, right before the holidays," Wadell said. "Schools shut down because buildings were damaged and many buses were flipped and mangled."
There had been a small silver lining: Not many people had been out on the roads when the tornado hit. But the days that followed still held heavy heartbreak. The tornadoes claimed at least 89 lives across five states, including 77 in Kentucky alone. But on Dec. 11, nearly 24 hours after the storm, families found themselves with many uncertainties as the sun set. Without electricity, Mayfield grew cold and dark.
"There were only a few pockets of lights from search crews, Kentucky National Guard checkpoints and news crews broadcasting updates and survivor stories from the tight-knit city that felt more like a ghost town," Wadell said.
Hundreds of miles away, residents in Greenville, California, had faced a different disaster to rebuild from. The Dixie Fire burned from mid-July into late October, scorching nearly 1 million acres across the state of California. Greenville was one of the towns in the path of the second-largest fire in the state's history.
"The smoke had cleared, the flames were gone, but the loss was still fresh and painful," Wadell said of his return to the town on Sept. 7, a month after the fire had raced through the community. During his visit, a few families and business owners were still sifting through the rubble, looking for anything that might have survived the flames.
"We’ve sadly become accustomed to wildfires racing through rural areas and torching pockets of homes in recent years, but to see most of a town burn down was difficult to digest," Wadell said. "All that was left of one home was the stone steps leading to a house that burned down to the foundation and garage floor. Even with so many bad memories and the threat of future fires, some families are determined to rebuild their hometown."
In contrast to the other weather events and disasters he had reported on, heat waves and droughts weren't always as visual, Wadell pointed out. However, they still left their mark, from the economic and ecological impacts to the physical bathtub rings around shrinking reservoirs' exposed basins. California's Lake Shasta was one such reservoir he visited on Sept. 29.
"It's difficult to realize how much water had vanished from California's reservoirs this fall, until you made the long walk down to the water and looked up," Wadell said. "There were dozens of bathtub rings along the cracked shorelines showing where the water levels steadily dropped as demand peaked during the hot summer months."
Tony Laubach
The 2021 storm-chasing season kicked off with a bit of a twist for AccuWeather National Reporter Tony Laubach.
Two hours after Dania Laubach and her husband had closed on their house in Milliken, Colorado, she looked over her shoulder to see a stunning sight: a twister arching from the sky a few miles off.
In the middle of moving their mattress into their newly purchased home, the two pulled it inside as quickly as possible before running to close all of the doors and windows. Once the home was as secure as it could be with a tornado looming in the distance and armed with only their phone cameras, the Laubachs began the chase.
"Personally, this was an omen to me as a storm chaser," Laubach said. "[It] was a battle over the last several years to get to this point, and to see it come full circle in a manner such as this was particularly impactful."
Tony has been a storm chaser for more than 20 years and has seen hundreds of tornadoes, but this was the first to have an impact so close to home. As for Dania, this was both her first chase and her first time seeing a tornado despite the couple having previously lived in Kansas.
“It started off really spindly and really cute, and then it got really big and mean at the end," Dania said. "There was a mini-tornado inside or you could see the funnel. I don’t know all the terminology, but it was really beautiful and I was honored to see my first tornado with my husband.”
Nobody was injured from the tornado, but the National Weather Service reported that livestock had been killed. It did, however, damage numerous farms. The twister reportedly covered 14 miles and did not approach the Laubachs' home.
Editor's Choice
With a track that stretched from New Orleans to New England, Hurricane Ida impacted millions. Photos that surfaced from Louisiana, Tennessee and New York captured the damage from the storm and emotional toll in a way that words could not fully describe.
In Houma, Reuters showed Theophilus Charles sitting on his heavily damaged home after the hurricane had made landfall. He told the news organization that he had lost everything -- his home, clothes, furniture, appliances -- all had been lost to the storm. His sister, Tomika Patterson, set up a GoFundMe page for him after people saw his photo circulating in the news. It has since closed, but not before raising over $7,500. After hearing about Charles' story, Shawna Fuller set up a second GoFundMe on behalf of Patterson. The page raised an additional $1,000.
Over 1,000 miles from where Ida made landfall, the former hurricane dumped heavy rainfall over the Northeast in September as a tropical rainstorm. For the first time ever, the National Weather Service office in New York City issued a flash flood emergency on the evening of Sept. 1, covering northeastern New Jersey, followed shortly after by the office's second-ever flash flood emergency. This time the alert was for New York City itself. Within one hour, Central Park was deluged with 3.15 inches of rainfall from 8:51 to 9:51 p.m., local time.
The death toll began to mount as stormwater cascaded into basement apartments, trapping many people. Danny Hong had been in such an apartment as Ida swept into the region. The water came up to his neck in his apartment in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens in New York City. Both Hong and his wife survived, but more than 52 people in the Northeast lost their lives due to the storm.
Across the nation, months earlier, a man in Casper, Wyoming, found himself chest-deep in snow after eastern Wyoming received "anomalously high" snowfall totals near Casper Mountain the weekend of March 13-15. Saturday brought snowfall rates of 2 to 3 inches per hour at times, which continued into that Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. At one point, starting at 6 a.m., local time, Sunday, 14 inches of snow fell within six hours at the Casper International Airport. At the National Weather Service office in Cheyenne, 10 inches of snow fell from midnight until 6 a.m., local time, Sunday.
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For the latest weather news check back on AccuWeather.com. Watch the AccuWeather Network on DIRECTV, Frontier, Spectrum, fuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios. AccuWeather Now is now available on your preferred streaming platform
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