Introduction
FLICKR PHOTO/DAVE MALKOFF
The Los Angeles skyline.
When you think about natural disasters in the United States, what places do you think of?
You might think of the South, with its vulnerability to hurricanes from the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.
You might think of the Midwest, famous for its springtime tornadoes and its extremes of hot and cold.
Or you might think of the Northeast and the powerful winter storms that sometimes cripple this highly urbanized region.
This Friday marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most powerful storm systems ever to strike the United States - a storm that produced wind gusts over 170 miles per hour, damaged thousands of homes, and killed dozens of people.
But it wasn't a hurricane; it wasn't a Nor'easter; it wasn't a tornado in the Plains.
The Columbus Day windstorm that struck the Pacific Northwest on Oct. 12, 1962, was just one example of the fury Mother Nature has unleashed on the West over the course of American history.
In fact, as my colleagues and I researched historical disasters in the West, we came up with a surprising number of powerful, costly, and lethal calamities striking from the air above and the ground below.
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