This week in weather and science history

Here is a brief look at a few of the events that happened this week in history. This week we take a look at several deadly earthquakes, a late-season tropical system and a train disaster.

Just before 2 a.m., on December 27, 1939, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake shook the mountains eastern Turkey. The tremors struck the regional hub city of Erzincan hard, seriously damaging or destroying more than 100,000 buildings. Turkey would implement earthquake building codes after this disaster.

Winter conditions, including extremely low temperatures and blizzard conditions, hampered relief efforts and more than 33,000 people died from the quake and weather exposure. It was Turkey’s deadliest natural disaster of the 20th century.

Christmas time and earthquakes seem to go hand and head. On December 28, 1908, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake was centered between the southern Italy toe and Sicily. The quake destroyed Messina and Reggio Calabria and between 75,000 to 82,000 people died. It is the most destructive earthquake to hit Europe.

In a blinding blizzard in northeastern Ohio on December 29, 1876, one of the U.S. deadliest railroad disasters occurred.

A passenger train running on the Lake Shore and southern Michigan railway was approaching Ashtabula, in northeastern Ohio when disaster struck. The bridge over the Ashtabula River collapsed as the train rode over it, causing most of the train to crash into the ravine below. A fire engulfed the passenger cars and many passengers that survived the collapse died in the subsequent fire. An exact death toll isn’t known, but an estimated 100 people are believed to have died.

On this day in 2005, Tropical Storm Zeta formed over the east-central Atlantic. This would be the first time that the sixth letter of Greek alphabet was used on the secondary Atlantic Hurricane list and extended the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane season to the calendar’s last day. Zeta was also used to name a hurricane during the record-setting 2020 hurricane season. The Greek secondary alphabet list was retired after the 2020 season.

This tropical storm was one of only two Atlantic Hurricane Basin tropical system to exist in two calendar years.

As we know from this year, tornado outbreaks can occur in the year’s last month. In fact, on the last day of 2010, a tornado outbreak hit the Ozarks and the middle Mississippi Valley.

Twenty-eight tornadoes were reported on December 31, with five of them being EF3 twisters. One of these tornadoes killed four people while another EF3 caused more than $90 million in damage.

On January 1, 1801, Ceres is discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi. This asteroid, reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006, is the largest object in the Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter orbit.

A monster winter storm hit western Europe on January 2, 1976, causing gale-force winds and storm surge flooding across Ireland, the British Isles and western Europe. About 100 people were killed and damage estimates approached $1.3 billion.