Blizzard imagevia Shutterstock
Forty long time ago this week , the deadliest rash on disc rip through the downcast Caucasus and into Iran , where it leave 4,000 people stagnant . The Blizzard of 1972 , as this god-awful tempest has come to be known , was n’t your outpouring of the mill squall ; it wiped entire villages—200 villages , to be exact — off the mapping .
Coming on the heels of a serial of storms in late January , the blizzard of 1972 traveled through westerly Iran and into Azerbaijan from about February 3 to February 8 , dropping up to 26 feet of snow — that ’s a two and half story building worth of snow — and snapping telephone lines , bury commuter train trains , entombing villages , and crushing cars in its viewing .
At the height of this rash , self-assurance estimate that a part about the size of Wisconsin , spanning most of westerly Iran , was entirely inter for more than a week . Those few who survived the -13 arcdegree Fahrenheit temperatures were without water , food , heat and medical aid for days on ending at a time when — just in showcase these poor people did n’t have enough to deal with — a deadly flu virus was also go through rural Iran .
On February 9 , 1972 , after near a hebdomad of constant snowfall , the blizzard broke for a legal brief , but merciful , 24 - 60 minutes period , allow Iranian rescue worker to be transported by helicopter out to what looked essentially like enormous snow drift — whitened expanses where villages used to be .
According to Associated Press reports , some rescue prole who ’d been throw away on a snow movement burying a small town called Sheklab drudge for two day uncoiled , tunnel through 8 foot of Baron Snow of Leicester , only to find 18 frozen bodies and no one — not one individual person in a population of 100 — still alive .
Another blizzard started up again on February 11 , drive rescue workers to desert their searches . Army helicopters left two ton of boodle and dates scattered over the snowdrift , in hope that some the great unwashed could tunnel their room to the airfoil , but many never did .
The 2d deadliest rash on record tore through Afghanistan in 2008 , bringing -30 point temperatures and killing an estimated 926 people .
