Sunday, December 27, 2009
2009 Winter Blizzard ReCap
The Christmas Blizzard of 2009 will be one blizzard which won't soon be forgotten and will draw memories of raging blizzards of years past. For 18 to 24 hours, a large part of south central Nebraska and extreme northern Kansas was blasted with 30 to 60 mph winds, visibilities less than 1/2 mile and frequent "white-out" conditions. Winds dropped off dramatically by dawn Saturday, December 26th, although still gusted to 35 mph.
A total of 7.8 inches of snow fell at the Central Nebraska Regional Airport at Grand Island on Christmas Day. That broke the previous record of 3.0 inches of snow set back in 1941. So, Christmas 2009 goes down as the "snowiest" Christmas on record for Grand Island. The snow melted down to 0.51 inches of water, which was also a new record. The old record for liquid precipitation was 0.20 inches in 1941.
Hastings joined the record club as well, and measured 9.2 inches of the National Weather Service Office north of town. That broke the previous record of 9.0 inches of snow back in 1945. A total of 0.58" of liquid equivalent precipitation was measured. However, that was not enough to break a record.
Of course, its the wind that makes a blizzard, not the snow. The strongest winds occurred during the daylight hours on Christmas Day and into the early evening. Sustained winds were near 40 mph at times with gusts to 60 mph.
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In an interview with Webster County Roads Department employee, Toby Alber, We learned that County roads conditions like these had not been matched in the 11 or so years he has been clearing snow from roads for the county.
Alber was out opening snow blocked roads from day break this morning (Sunday) until well after dark tonight and reports that there are still county roads that are impassible due to the snow drifts. Alber also put in a long day saturday. He said he hopes to be able to open the last of the closed roads in his district by tomorrow evening. Saturday many roads closed again due to the wind. Today there was little wind and more progress was possible.
In the afternoon the sun came out for a while which caused the snow to melt slightly and when the temperature dropped those areas became very slick making additional snow removal even more difficult.
Alber said his day was punctuated frequently by phone calls and messages from residents stranded in their homes asking for their roads to be opened.
Alber said all members of the county roads department were working today and doing their best to make the county roads passable.
Alber said it was his understanding that the southern part of the county experienced less snow and drifting than the northern part of the county.
Intermittant patchy freezing drizzle for the Blue Hill area! When will it stop!! Enough already!
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