From the coldest January in Pittsburgh’s history through today’s mild temperatures, the weather on Jan. 27 can be wildly unpredictable.
As warm wind blew through the open windows of my apartment yesterday in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, I was thinking about how unusually warm it was for Jan. 26. The National Weather Service in Pittsburgh recorded a high of 59 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday at its office in Moon Township. At my place, in the Borough of Dormont, the weather app on my phone told me it was 61. And while neither is a record high, they are almost tropical readings when compared to Pittsburgh’s historical temperatures for this week.
I ought to know. I was born at 7:04 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 27, 1977. On Jan. 26, 1977—47 years ago yesterday—my dad drove my mom to Magee Women’s Hospital. Mom was having contractions, but they left early because snow had already started to fall. That’s the day that a memorable storm brought a whopper of a cold front through western Pennsylvania. It delivered thundersnow, lightning, and temperatures that dipped to -10 on Jan 28. Windchills approached -65 as 45 mph sustained winds drifted snow as high as 2 feet in some spots.
The Calm After the Storm
That storm also gave my birthday bad karma. All my life, I’ve said that that the weather is always bad on my birthday. But nearly 50 years of NWS data shows that this isn’t true. In fact, it’s fair to say that my birthday has gotten a bad rap. After all, it also is National Chocolate Cake Day.
And, after combing through 47 years of temperatures readings, snow depth measurements, and wind speed recordings, I’ve determined that I’m no more likely to have a bad weather day on my birthday than I am to have a good one. Why, then, have I always believed I was in for birthday weather doom when nearly a half-century of living it should have proven otherwise? Because, as I’ve come to recall, a couple of them were so bad that they’ve washed out everything else. And thanks to the mild weather we’re having this year, I’ve remembered these stories of weather-related birthday fiascos.
To the Hospital, Just in Case
Of course, I wasn’t “sitting” in the car when my dad backed it out of the driveway on the morning of Jan. 26, 1977. Snow was on the ground. It was near the end of a monthlong cold snap where temperatures never reached the freezing mark. Dad said that snow had started to fall a little by the time they left, but the bigger concern was the “blizzard” that was being forecasted.
Power and other utility outages were expected. So, when mom called her doctor to report early contractions, he had her admitted to the hospital and told her to get there right away. It’s an unlikely scenario today even if a severe winter event were brewing. In 1977, my mom was 35 and I was her first child. Things were different.
They lived at 1806 Murdstone Road, and Magee is about 11 miles away in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood. My dad has said he doesn’t remember what route he took but was glad that he had my grandfather’s 1973 Jeep Wagoneer. Dad had been using it to visit properties in the mountains of Fayette County, where he and my grandfather were trying to secure leases to strip mine coal. But that day, the Jeep—which was actually registered to a coal company that my grandfather owned, and therefore sported a Kentucky license plate—also served as a delivery wagon for me.
They got to the hospital just fine. Somewhere along the way, my dad asked my mom, “What’s his name going to be if he’s a boy?” Although Sara Ann had been selected for me as a girl, the boy’s name still caused some dispute. Mom settled it on that drive, and I became known as Matthew Dean.
The Thunder Snows, and the Lightning Strikes
It was several hours of waiting. Mom’s labor became more intense, and as I got closer to making my appearance, so did the storm. Mom had a window in her room, and she and my dad were watching as lightning broke through the sky as night was beginning to fall. The glass in the windows shook with thunder, and snow was flying fast to the ground in the form of showers.
Meanwhile, mom’s pain continued to grow. As the storm raged outside the window, mom was in active labor all through the night. Dad said he has always felt that the doctors waited way too long. Finally, as dawn broke, mom had a C-Section.
I’m sure they were too busy to realize that by the time I was there, the storm had mostly subsided. According to the NWS, no snow fell on Jan. 27, 1977, in Pittsburgh. The temperature was cold. The high was 16 and the low was 4. And the worst was yet to come.
The Pittsburgh ‘Blizzard’ of Jan. 27-28, 1977
The weather situation during the week that I was born was anything but normal. WTAE (Pittsburgh’s channel 4) shared this old TV news and weathercast video from Jan. 28, 1977. In it, legendary Pittsburgh weather forecaster Joe DeNardo talks candidly about the subzero temperatures and windchills that were gripping Pittsburgh.
Meanwhile, radio enthusiast Steve West also has created this 24-hour compilation by KDKA on Jan. 28, 1977. The desperateness of the situation can be heard as emergency numbers were listed throughout that Friday and businesses began to close early. Check it out below.
At home, my grandfather had arrived in town. And he didn’t have good news for my dad. All the pipes had frozen. Dad said he spent two days digging up the yard and trying to thaw them.
Simply Unpredictable
This is the story I regularly heard as I was growing up about the day I was born. While it gave my birthday bad weather juju, that fear was affirmed by some wild birthday weather events during my youth. It snowed 6.7 inches on my 9th birthday, which was in 1986. That closed school, and the effects of that snowfall also lasted several days. When I was 17, in 1994, my parents took me to dinner at Red Lobster in Uniontown (we were there for other reasons). We battled ice rain and slippery road conditions and were nervously looking outside every few minutes throughout the entire meal.
Yet, when I turned 22 in 1999, it was 60 degrees outside when my parents, girlfriend, and I dined at the original Quaker Steak and Lube in Sharon. Five of my birthdays have had a high temperature in the 50s, and eight—including today—have been in the 40s.
Then again, it also dropped to a low of -6 on my 45th birthday in 2022. Which just goes to show that regardless of whether you are talking about me or the weather outside, you never know what you’re going to get on Jan. 27 in Pittsburgh.
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