3/27-3/29 Blizzard

[Stephen Locke]

Pratt, Kansas

Pratt, Kansas, midnight 3-23, Saturday. This is a small town trying to dig out from a once in a lifetime snow event. I say trying to dig out because most people were not successful with that today. This will be a two day process for most and several days for some. I have talked to travelers from Wisconsin and Chicago who say the have never seen anything like this in their lives even up north where they come from. Another women from Wichita saw me taking pictures and wants one to send to her kids because they don't believe there are snow drifts up to the roof. Pratt was the end of the line last night for travelers and truckers on highways 54, 400 & 281 when the State closed the highways. Anyone who got stuck here last night never got out today so are now spending their second day/night here. Anyone with a car or a truck woke up to find their vehicle buried. Many cars were buried completely. Large earth moving equipment is opening up the streets. Parking lots will be next. Only then can you even consider extricating your car from a parking lot. Snow is heavy, wet, dense. The worst kind if you are stuck. There is a 18 wheel truck jam here. Local residents are hiking to the store rather than try to get their vehicle moving. Most stores did not open today.
While enroute here today I saw numerous vehicles WAY off the road. These cars and trucks are not just stuck they are way, way off. I can only assume that in blizzard conditions people became disoriented and simply did not know where the road was. Snow plows busy today repeatably reopening east/west routes that drift back over as soon as they are plowed.

Photographs and account later this week.

 

[Chris Hovanic]

This is certainly a "what could have been storm" for the Kansas City metro. Moisture transport of the magnitude that occurred with this event reminds me of classic Noreasters growing up in central Virginia. It's rare to see such an incredibly well-developed TROWAL in an eastern Plains/Missouri Valley snowstorm (the 295K isentropic surface indicated parcels beginning at the surface along the Alabama/Mississippi Gulf Coast making it all the way back to Kansas City after ascending to 750-700 mb).

The irony of this event lies in the fact that was in actually too strong. The TROWAL and associated warm advection was so intense that the warm air wrapped cyclonically all the way around the deeply occluded cyclone, displacing the colder air aloft to the south and southwest. The +2 to +4C warm nose between 800-875mb or so through most of the morning killed half the QPF, resulting in worthless freezing rain/sleet. Once precipitation finally changed over to snow in the afternoon, half of what fell came in the form of poorly accumulating "pellety snow" (probably a mixture of snow and graupel) and associated heavily rimed flakes. This was probably related to the large isothermal layer very near 0C that was quite deep aloft.

Finally by late afternoon thermal profiles cooled enough that well aggregated dendrites became the dominate crystal type and a large bulk of the accumulation occurred.

Still, 2-6" generally seems to have fallen across the metro, but sadly, it could have been oh so much more.

 

[Steve Miller TX]

With full sunshine and temperatures getting above 40F, the 10-13 inches of snowfall across the Amarillo area melted ALOT today and at a rapid pace. It even created some minor street flooding issues. I put together a photo gallery of the event at:

http://www.caprockphotography.com/gallery/7747200_5vxdu

A few of the pics:

 

[Jim Saueressig]

. We lost 6 trees and below is a video of some of the stuff I shot from around the neighborhood,

The video you are trying to view is Protected, and can only be viewed by the owner and his or her Contacts.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

The video you are trying to view is Protected, and can only be viewed by the owner and his or her Contacts.

Sorry about that Jim, I changed it to open access, so you should be able to watch it now.

 

[Joel Wright]

HUGE bust for the QC area. 4-8" was forecasted. Most areas got 1-2" or less. I measured 0.7" in my backyard. A heartbreaking move by this storm.

 

[John Farley]

There were some reports of thundersnow in St. Louis and the western suburbs, and 2-3 inches of snow in some areas, mainly the western and northern suburbs. If there was any thunder in Edwardsville, which I doubt, I slept through it, and we got only about 3/4 of an inch of snow, and that only on elevated surfaces. Big winner in the STL CWA was Bowling Green, MO with 4.5 inches. In general, accumulations were kept down by the fact that enough warm air was entrained into the deformation zone to keep the precipitation rain for quite a while before changing to snow.

 

[Heather Moser]

Here are some pictures from Byers, Kansas (about 15 miles NW of Pratt). They were taken by my father at his house.

These were from Saturday morning:

And these were taken about an hour ago. They have had full sun and temperatures in the upper 30s/40s since sometime yesterday, so the yard stick measurements are probably a few inches lower than the original snowfall total. I know some the numbers are hard to see, but the top of the stick is 36 inches.

 

[Rocky Rascovich]

I returned a few hours ago from the most amazing blizzard chase I've ever done. A total of 24-28" of that beautiful white stuff in Coldwater, KS. where I met up with Jeff Piotrowski and had a fabulous time documenting one of the greatest snow events that area has ever seen.

I took lots of great video and pictures. Now that I have a decent internet connection. I really need to master how to upload pictures to ST. Once I achieve that, I'll have felt that I reinvented the wheel!! I'll make this a top priority this week and do my best to share some of my photo's as soon as possible.

Rocky&family