Fifty years ago a fascinating weather anomaly blanketed the United States in arctic, snowy weather and temporarily spawned fears of a new ice age. Call it the “snowy ’70s.”
It was so wintry that the cold wave of January 1977 produced the only known trace of snow in the greater Miami area of Florida ever reported.
“The 1970s were indeed a cold decade by historical standards, especially the late 1970s,” meteorologist Robert Henson of Yale Climate Connections said in an email. “Over the last century (from 1925 through 2024), two of the three coldest U.S. years were 1978 and 1979. The coldest U.S. winter on record (going back to 1895) was 1978-79.”…