Perfect storm

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It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into 1991 Halloween Nor'easter. (Discuss)

For other uses, see Perfect storm (disambiguation).

The phrase perfect storm is borrowed from the 1997 book The Perfect Storm. The phrase refers to the simultaneous occurrence of events which, taken individually, would be far less powerful than the result of their chance combination. Such occurrences are rare by their very nature, so that even a slight change in any one event contributing to the perfect storm would lessen its overall impact.

The term is also used to describe a hypothetical hurricane that happens to hit at a region’s most vulnerable area, resulting in the worst possible damage by a hurricane of its magnitude.

1 Origin
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Origin

The 1991 Halloween Nor’easter is the event that gave rise to the idiom perfect storm. In 1993, journalist and author Sebastian Junger planned to write a book about that particular storm and, in the course of his research, he spoke with Bob Case, who had been a deputy meteorologist in the Boston office of the National Weather Service at the time of the storm. Case described to Junger the confluence of three different weather-related phenomena that combined to create what Case referred to as the "perfect" situation to generate such a storm. From that, Junger coined the phrase perfect storm and chose to use The Perfect Storm as the title of his book. Junger published his book in 1997 and its success brought the phrase into popular culture. Its adoption was accelerated with the release of the 2000 feature film adaptation of Junger's book.

Although the 1991 Halloween Nor'easter was a powerful storm by any measure, there have been other storms that have exceeded its strength. According to Case, the type of convergence of weather events to which he was referring—warm air from a low-pressure system coming from one direction, a flow of cool and dry air generated by a high-pressure from another direction, and tropical moisture provided by Hurricane Grace—while unusual, is not exceptionally rare or unique, despite the way the phrase is commonly used.^[1]^[2]

The phrase was awarded the top prize by Lake Superior State University in their 2007 list of words that deserve to be banned for overuse.^[3]