Jack-o-lanterns. Ghosts and goblins. Trick or treating. The sights and smells of Halloween are ubiquitous with this time of year. The sun sets earlier now, casting us in an unsettling darkness that makes us retreat to the safety of our homes. While the "scariest" aspects of Halloween tend to range from the unexplainable knocking on the front door to the unpleasant stomach aches from consuming too much candy, tonight we will dive into another unsettling aspect of the Halloween season... the weather.
While the typical chill of mid-autumn is what is usually seen on and around Halloween, some downright strange or peculiar weather events have occurred at the end of October that would spook even the most hardened meteorologist.
Typically Christmas is the holiday where blankets of snow are wished for. What could be more festive than waking up to snow in your neighborhood on a cold Christmas Day? Unfortunately for many in October of 2011, Mother Nature brought snow nearly two months too early. From Appalachia in Virginia to New England, a Nor'easter brought a wide path of snowfall, exceeding an inch for many with good portions of the region seeing over 6 inches!
The storm formed on October 29th as an area of low pressure off the coast of the Carolinas. Throughout the day an area of precipitation overspread much of the eastern seaboard, initially starting as rain before changing over to snow. As the low pressure deepened winds picked up, with 69 mph gusts reported in Massachusetts. By the morning of October 30th, the storm passed south of Nantucket with precipitation transferring from New England to maritime Canada.
Despite the storm wrapping up before Halloween itself, much of the region saw enough snowfall to linger through the holiday. Peru, MA saw the highest totals, clocking in at 32.0 inches. Numerous cities broke their October snowfall records, including Newark (5.2 inches), Central Park in NYC (2.9 inches), and Hartford (12.3 inches). The Halloween Nor'easter was only the third time on record that New York City reported snowfall.
In late October of 1991, a fierce Nor'easter impacted New England and the Atlantic Provinces of Canada. Initially forming as an extratropical cyclone, the storm absorbed what remained of Hurricane Grace to its south and evolved into an unnamed Category 1 hurricane off of the New England shore.
Originating off of the Eastern Coast of Canada on October 28th, this area of low pressure was forced southward, peaking as a strong extratropical system. At its peak strength the storm produced significant wave heights throughout the Gulf of Maine and off the coast of Nova Scotia. On October 30th, a record-breaking wave of 100.7 ft was recorded by a buoy approximately 260 miles south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, which was the largest wave ever recorded on the Scotian Shelf. Significant wave heights were also observed by a NOAA buoy off of Cape Cod measuring 39 ft.
Over $200 million in damage were sustained across seven states, mainly as a result of rough seas and beachfront property damage. Thirteen deaths were confirmed, six of whom were on board a commercial fishing boat called the Andrea Gail. The ship, which carried all six fishermen, had made its last radio contact on October 28th in the waters off of Nova Scotia. The Andrea Gail sank on its return back to its home port of Gloucester, Massachusetts, with her debris washing up along the shore in the weeks after the storm. After a Coast Guard search found no survivors, the crew were given up for lost, their fates becoming the centerpiece of the 1997 non-fiction book The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. The nickname for the storm, made popular as a result of the book, was further engrained into history thanks to the major Hollywood film of the same name starring George Clooney in 2000.
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One of the most memorable weather events to transpire near Halloween was Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which brought havoc to much of the Northeastern United States. For New England and the Tri-State area Sandy remains one of the most costly events, even over a decade on.
While much of the focus on Sandy hones in on the impacts to the United States, the storm's origins were in the tropics where it had its own set of impacts. After initially starting off as an area of low pressure in the Caribbean Sea, Sandy organized into a tropical storm on October 22. Two days later the cyclone strengthened into a hurricane, making landfall near Kingston, Jamaica later that same day as a Category 1 storm. Just south of Cuba Sandy rapidly intensified to a Category 3 storm, making a second landfall on October 25th near Cantiago de Cuba.
Once Sandy tore through the tropics (where it resulted in 90 fatalities and nearly $3 billion in damages), it weakened considerably and became disorganized as it lifted northward into the open Atlantic, skirting through the Bahamas. By October 27th, Sandy was losing full tropical characteristics, developing frontal structures along its outer band of circulation.
Sandy re-strengthened off the coast of the Mid-Atlantic into a Category 2 hurricane. The storm was massive in size, its diameter of gale-force wind expanding over 1,150 miles and being the largest such storm to so in the Atlantic. Unusually low barometric pressure on October 29th, when the storm was just off of the eastern seaboard, dipped down to 940 millibars, resulting in record-low values in several coastal cities.
By the evening of the 29th Sandy's convection diminished, thus losing its tropical status. Approximately two hours later Sandy made landfall near Brigantine, New Jersey with sustained winds of 80 mph. Impacts across the region were numerous, with the storm's slow departure resulting in days of continuous winds and rain before eventually merging with an area of low pressure in Eastern Canada on November 2th.
As of 2025, Sandy sits as the 7th most costly hurricane in United States history. Despite being extratropical when it made landfall, damages amounted to $65 billion in the U.S. alone. Thousands of homes were destroyed, particularly in New Jersey and New York where the most impactful storm surge occurred. Millions across the region were left without power and 71 direct fatalities can be attributed to the storm in the United States (New York and New Jersey had the highest death toll with 49 and 10, respectively). Though the worst of the storm had passed by Halloween, over 6 million Americans still had no power by that point across fifteen states. Wall Street, which had seen extensive flooding as a result of sea water, saw the New York Stock Exchange close for two days. The last time the stock exchange had closed for two full days as a result of weather was for the Great Blizzard of 1888.
