FCST: 12/18/08-12/19/08 Central Plains / Upper Midwest Winter Storm

[Matthew Harding]

Well we lucked out on frozen precip but last night we must have had some strange winds. In the last 3 years we have had some hellacious winds and I had never lost a single shingle on my house even when the house next to me had some 20 feet or so ripped off during a storm last year but last night I lost 10 foot of ridge cap (architectural 30 year) and they shingles were laying on both the ground on the East side of the house and on the roof on the West side?? It ripped em right up pulling them through the nails.

Last evening in Wichita, we had SE winds of around 20 mph last night as the low pressure passed to the NW of Wichita. Between 1-3am cst, winds gusted here between 50-55mph from the W/SW as the low passed by. So what may have happened was that you were closer to the low pressure and the SE and W winds were stronger as the low pressure passed by. That could be a reason for the shingles being on the ground on the east and west sides of the roof.

 

[rdale]

6-10" covered most of the area...

 

[Robert Dewey]

6-10" covered most of the area...

It seems like western lower received less... looking at the DTX map, looks like most places over here received 7-12 inches.

I would have thought GRR would have been the winner... they were under a pretty heavy band for quite some time.

 

[rdale]

There were some 10-14" reports closer to GRR.

 

[Mike Kovalchick]

There were some 10-14" reports closer to GRR.

Ended up with 8" at my location with 1.05" liquid equivalent. There was an unexpected period of sleet & freezing rain that kept snow amounts a little under what I expected. Not quite sure how some warm air managed to sneck up this far North aloft. (At least the models did better at QPF this time around.) Missed the thundersleet/graupel that few locals witnessed. Already looking forward to the next in a series of storms heading this way for Saturday night/Sunday. The lake effect component along with wind will be significant issues with the next storm.

 

[Jim Zandonai]

Here we received between 6-8 " in the RFD area.. a brief bout of heavy snow occurred last night then changed to heavy sleet. This cut down on the accumulation here..then between 6am-9am heavy snow fell with visbilites cut down to 1/10-2/10 of a mile. This added up to about an inch an hour average though.
Some areas though reported thundersnow in North IL. but I didnt witness any.
Not a bad storm but really feel for the people affected by the ice storm. Went through that last year with power being out..not fun.

Now looks like another event taking shape with much less snow here but more winds and bitter cold wind chills..

 

[Adam Lucio]

About a foot of snow/sleet/freezing rain compacted into about 3 inches. The snowpack is so thick and strong my 220 pound self can walk across it and not leave a footprint in some spots. It was the heaviest shovel fulls i ever had to shovel.

I cant remember the exact order in which things fell but it went something like:

Mix sleet/snow - freezing rain - sleet [heavy for a long time] - snow - mix- freezing rain/sleet....and then finished up with thundersleet this morning.

Not impressed with accumulations but ill give it points for precip variety. At one point I decided to grab a large drink glass and put it outside to see what would happen. It was neat to see some of the pellets were perfect circles and crystal clear.

 

[GPhillips]

Well we lucked out on frozen precip but last night we must have had some strange winds. In the last 3 years we have had some hellacious winds and I had never lost a single shingle on my house even when the house next to me had some 20 feet or so ripped off during a storm last year but last night I lost 10 foot of ridge cap (architectural 30 year) and they shingles were laying on both the ground on the East side of the house and on the roof on the West side?? It ripped em right up pulling them through the nails.

Rather impressive pressure rise/fall couplet that went across Kansas overnight. More than 8 mb rises in 3 hours in central Kansas at 3 AM and a tight gradient between the fall center and rise center. Coffey county airport gusted to 48 kts near 3 AM.

 

[Joel Wright]

Sleet dominated here. It cut down on snowfall and freezing rain. There were periods of moderate freezing rainfall though which allowed a glaze to accumulate to about 0.4". Had about a half inch of snow at the end. The most interesting thing is that the inch of sleet that fell was glazed over by freezing rain, which acted to cement the mixture into a 1-1.5" thick solid sheet of ice on everything but trees.