3/27-3/29 Blizzard

[jladue]

Shane, next time maybe you should keep your mouth shut. I hate it when you are right. Here in Shawnee, OK. We have ONLY had rain. NO SNOW at all!

I don't mind rain, but when I am expecting snow, it is a let-down. Also, when I see rain, I want warm rain!

Currently it is 35F and climbing. I don't expect any snow at all out of this system.

Not only did we get just cold rain here but we didn't get of that in Norman either!

BTW, witnessing 25" + in Coldwater and Pratt is a once in decade event, far more rare than witnessing a big tornado if you're a chaser. I envy Jeff and Rocky for being up there.

In the last 2 days you could've seen a tornado and a blizzard within 3 hrs of Norman.

 

[David Schuttler]

Cars are getting stuck on hills Tulsa,

 

[Mike Smith]

Blizzard conditions now in northeast Wichita. Visibility less than 1/4 mi., heavy snow, drifting snow.

We had about 3 inches of sleet, a quarter of an inch of glaze ice.

Since the snow began this morning, I am estimating we have picked up two inches, but hard to tell with all the blowing. KAAO (one mile from my home) has gusts to 30 kt. at the moment.

 

[Chris Nuttall]

I wanna see snow total for Amarillo. Those wrap around bands just stuck idle over the top of there for literally like 10-12 hours straight I dunno what type of precip they were putting out, but would be interesting to see.

Basically, it snowed nearly non-stop from 3am Saturday morning to 2am Sunday morning. There might have been a lull for an hour or two early, but that was it. I can see a 5'-6' drift across the street from me up against a garage door. I'll run out and try to measure here shortly.

Here's a link to a PNS from AMA with preliminary snowfall totals:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=AMA&product=pns&format=CI&version=1&glossary=1

 

[John Farley]

Same here in Tulsa Shane...lol.

I just had a gut feeling that we wouldn't get anything out of this when I saw the easterly wind last night. Thought to myself hmm....temps will warm instead of cool tonight & we'll get nothing but a cold rain.

So far, that is the case. Rain and 38 degrees!

We might get a dusting when we experience the backside of the storm, but I doubt it.

Sure needed the rain though so I'm not complaining...lol

Hey, Jeff, is that thundersnow I see on the radar in the Tulsa area? That gives me a LITTLE hope for the STL area later tonight, though from the current model runs I doubt we will get much. Glad to see it's not a total bust for you Tulsa folks after all, though.

 

[Tim Vasquez]

The stuff wrapping around in the panhandle is never going to make it here...so once again, we go from winter storm and up to 6" of accumulation to nothing. I said it two days ago.."I'll believe it when I see it." If I'm wrong and end up looking like an asshole - AWESOME...that means we got snow.

Shane, you hit the bullseye with that forecast. I am just astonished that we could not pull in anything significant on that back side. I guess big winter surprises are something we can only get in the "old days".

Ugh, I sure blew that forecast. Well, screw it, April is almost here.

Tim

 

[Steve Miller]

The amount of snow coming down in Tulsa is pretty impressive. Looks like they have a long ways to go before they're out of it too.
OKC got ripped. Shane, grats on the forecast!

 

[Mark M Smith]

we are getting some goood rap around snow right now. At least we are getting some....

 

[Chuck Robertson]

Well, now I feel totally guilty! I complained all day yesterday about how our "blizzard" was hardly a blizzard at all - then came last night! The precipitation pattern finally got its act together and filled in and that is when the fun started here in Miami. We had several hours of intermitten whiteout conditions with S+. It is very hard to determine just how much we wound up with here due to all the drifting. In some places the grass blades are poking up, while in other areas there are large expanses that look to be covered a couple of feet. I would have to estimate perhaps 10 inches on average.

This is such a blessing to recieve this moisture here as we have had no precipitation of significance since October. This may help in our storm season which is just about to get kicked off.

The sun is now out, and the snow covered caprock breaks and mesas here in Roberts County look totally breathtaking! I will be breaking out the camera shortly.

Now that we have finally had winter here in the Panhandle, bring on spring!!!

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I awoke around 7:45 am here at my house just NE of Edmond and saw no snow. I don't know if it snowed between then and 3 am (when I went to sleep), but it was melted by 7:45 am if it did. We've got some light snow falling now that's accumulating on roofs and grass, but nothing that I'd consider more than a trace. Indeed, a very heavy snow band is working its way southward between OKC and Tulsa, but that'll largely stay E of the OKC area.

The warm air was always forecast to be in very close proximity to I35, but the last several models looked as though the NNW winds would push a bit farther eastward a bit faster. SUch forecasts at least gave a snow profile by mid evening/late in the OKC area (of course, we needed any precip at that time, but at least what would fall was going to be snow instead of drizzle). Instead, we didn't get much in the way of QPF by the time we finally got a snow profile. Here @ my place, winds stayed NE much of yesterday, which kept the sfc temp above freezing yesterday (and, most likely, temps above the sfc considerably above freezign). *shrug*

 

[Jay McCoy]

At my place I have between 13 and 14" with 4-5ft drifts. Officially Ama NWS recorded 11" but the west side of town got more. Like Chris said we had a couple of lulls midday friday but otherwise is snowed for almost 24 hrs straight and at times it was whiteout conditions. It seems Amarillo was in the "sweet spot" as far as the convective banding and the wraparound. Dalhart also took a big hit starting thursday night. Last I heard as of fridasy at 7pm they had 12" with 10ft drifts and every road in/out closed. They are isolated. That happned a few years ago to Boise City after that massive blizzard in SE colorado and SW kansas that caused 20-30ft drifts and the national guard had to drop hey to cattle from helicopters. Ofcourse this isnt anything like that storm.

Amarillos total in 24hrs on friday was 9.9" breaking a record set in 1931. Like Chuck said this is a huge help to us since we were in a major drought. It will help keep the dryline in the panhandle instead of west oklahoma..lol

 

[CZandbergen]

We have about 4" on the ground in mid town Tulsa now and it is still coming down with some decent snow bands coming in from the north. Pretty crazy weather. Welcome to OK...

 

[Vivek Mahale]

I believe the primary reason why some areas are seeing more rain than snow is because of the lack of ice crystals. Usually the snow growth zone is –10 C to –20 C, thus it is possible to get light rain (or drizzle) even with a sounding completely below freezing. Norman’s BUFKIT profiles (from the NAM) yesterday had saturation below the snow growth for almost all of the event.

 

[Jeff Smith]

OK, I take back everything I said in my last post...lol
Heavy snow since about 9:30am with 2-3 inches easy on the ground! Roads are snow covered and slick. Been out shooting video for the station. Man, I'm glad I'm not a meterologist..lol!!

...and yes, thundersnow!!!!

 

[Jonathan Whitehead]

it will be interesting to look at satellite tomorrow morning when sun comes out and see a comma feature of the snow around C OK where it didnt snow b/c Tulsa got 4" and thats NE of OKC. The ingestion of the dry air last night will show on vis satellite tomorrow

EDIT: Just to be meteorologically correct, it wasnt the simple ingestion of dry air that "ate away" at the wrap around precip b/c in the simple cyclone/conveyor belt model, the dry conveyor belt actually has the opposite effect, thereby destabilizing the atmosphere through the advection of midlevel dry air over low-level moist air just like in loaded-gun type soundings where you have a dry-slot btwn 700~300mb. My hypothesis as to what happened was that the upper-level RH dropped well below the 80% criterion needed for CSI/CI and looking at the 00Z OUN sounding from last night (attached) shows the midlevels to be rather dry compared to what would be needed for a heavy snow event, specifically a saturated isothermal layer (see Fig 14 in Moore et al. http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0434/20/1/pdf/i1520-0434-20-1-35.pdf) Additionally, values of EPV were above 1 PVU's (attached). Moore et al. (see their Fig. 11) has shown that EPV ≤ 0.25 is neccessary for banded heavy snowfall. And lastly, 700mb frontogenesis was almost not existant (attached). Moore et al. (see their Fig. 10) has shown that a strong frontogenic-frontolytic couplet located to the north of the stationary front on the cold side of the boundary to the NW of the sfc cyclone acts in creating strong deformation zone which acts in enhancing lift in areas of reduced EPV.

So in summary, the ingrediants never came together just right.