perfect storm
phrase

- the simultaneous occurrence of events which, taken individually, would be far less powerful than the result of their chance combination

(The Free Dictionary)

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WORD ORIGIN

The 1991 Nor’easter (colloquial for a powerful storm on the northeast coast of the U.S.) on Halloween evening is the event that gave rise to the expression perfect storm. In 1993, journalist and author Sebastian Junger planned to write a book about that particular storm. During his research, he spoke with Bob Case, a deputy meteorologist in the Boston office of the National Weather Service at the time of the storm.

Case described to Junger the combination 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 bestseller book.

The book follows the lives of the swordfishing crew of the Andrea Gail and their family members before and during the storm. The later part of the book attempts to reconstruct events at sea during the storm and aboard the Andrea Gail, as well as rescue efforts directed at several other ships caught in the storm.

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Practice OWAD in a conversation today, say something like:

"Some analysts described the global financial crisis as A PERFECT FINANCIAL STORM."