I posted about this on my facebook. This was an astounding event.. the north shore of Lake Overholser had about 2" at least from mid afternoon Sunday until just before midnight when it abated. I too first discovered this heading down the Kilpatrick.. I noted to Dee (my wife) that it looked unusually dark ahead of us and was probably a fog bank coming off the lake. Well, that fog bank was a bank of snow.. which really blew my mind.. I thought, what in the heck could be causing this, I went over the short term data pretty good and thought somehow their was a minor wave moving through that wasn't picked up on the models, but then how quickly it stopped by the time I got to NW 10th really had me scratching my head. I couldn't wait to tell the folks at our chaser gathering in Norman only to be told that this was already reported along with the explanation.
On the way home around 2130cst, we passed through there again, same spot and lo and behold, road conditions went from near normal to slick and hazardous. At the toll booth between NW 39th and NW Expressway, it was snowing at least a half inch per hour, maybe more.. and the snow this time continued to the NW EXP. exit and up the highway to the west side of Surrey Hills before it ended. The next morning on the way to work, you could clearly see the enhanced area of accumulation and I estimated it at least 2" on the trees and some of the cars in the residential areas on the north side of the lake. As much and for as long as it was snowing, I'm surprised there was only that much.
Back up in Michigan, we have several large power plants in the area.. I have never seen it produce snow before, even under bitterly cold conditions. I did however see what looked like some very light snow at the pulp and paper mills on the south side of Thunder Bay, ON. a couple of times.. weather conditions were actually similar to the night in question, but the flakes were very small and accumulations were inconsequential. This event at Lake Overholser was far better than anything I've seen.
I am interested in hearing from the long time residents of OKC just how often this has happened in addition to what occurred a long time as discussed in the earlier post. All I know is this winter has restored hope that from time to time, it can really snow here in central OK. This I believe is the first time since 2000 that we have eclipsed our normal average of 8.6"
and we're not done yet.. I think the potential is there for a couple more significant winter weather events before we finally start talking supercells.
