Plains Christmas Blizzard Summary, My Blog
UPDATE: We have now made a snow totals map that some blog readers (see Comments) believe is more accurate than the NOAA map, which suffers from misinterpreting "missing" values as zeroes.
UPDATE: Here's a cool water vapor animation from Scott @ CIMSS (click to view), and a mini-horse has trouble with big snow in Oklahoma.
ORIGINAL ENTRY: Blog reader Scott asked why I hadn't covered the Plains / Midwest Blizzard. First, if you had been looking at "J's Breaking Weather News" at right, I did transmit a few facts on our "BreakingWeather" Twitter feed. But until today, I hadn't written a blog entry on it.
Why? Long-time blog readers will know that there was a time in AccuWeather.com history when my blog was expected to handle every storm - in fact I started the first Weather News Headlines on AccuWeather.com in 2001. But that time has passed; I have transferred that ability to dozens of news writers constantly cranking out weather articles for AccuWeather.com 24/7 (including a Midwest/Plains specific news story every day). As a result, in 2007 I renamed my blog "WeatherMatrix" and since then have concentrated more on things that aren't being covered elsewhere, local weather here in PA, or post-summaries of storms that affect large populations, or generate large amounts of community content.
The Christmas Blizzard didn't affect the number of people that last week's East Coast Blizzard did, and it didn't generate many posts on our Facebook Page or Photo Gallery -- but that doesn't mean the storm was any less impactful, especially meteorologically, in fact this storm had some incredible snow amounts that bested last week's storm, Oklahoma City recorded their largest snowstorm in history, and blizzard conditions were experienced over a much wider area. The truth is, I would have probably blogged about it yesterday, had it not been Christmas (part of that transfer of procedure to the News Writers helps me spend more time with my family during the Holidays too). Here are the highest amounts reported by state (NWS Spotters):
Lead, SD: 37.5" Duluth, MN: 22.0" Sundance, WY: 19.0" Sioux City, IA: 17.2" Washburn, WI: 16.3" Des Lacs, ND: 15.0" Corning, NE: 14.0" Oklahoma City, OK: 14.1" Ouray, CO: 11.0" Silver City, MI: 9.0" Burkburnett, TX: 9.5" Albany, MO: 8.0"
*This reading was the largest snowstorm ever for the city (NWS).
Comments (5): Larry:
I noticed the map on the snowfall was a bit off as far as accumulation of snow in Illinois . Streamwood Illinois got 13 inches yesterday . The local forecasters in Chicagoland were calling for 1-3 inches . Oops . How can a forecaster be that wrong ? Thank you !!
Posted by Larry | December 27, 2009 9:48 AM Paul:
Jesse, the point being made is that the front page, big letter, screaming headlines stories are never about the midwest. Routinely my city of Grand Rapids(or at least the western suburbs) get more snow then major cities such as Buffalo, but I cannot recall the last time I even saw the name "Grand Rapids" unless I look up local forecasts. Places such as Houghton, Mi, might get 300 or more inches of snow in a year, with multiple storms of 2 or 3 feet, and never a word. The same applies to places in most other Midwestern states. On rare occasion there might be a blurb if something is historic such as the all time record at Ok.City...but that's about it. NYC gets 2" of snow and it get's more headlines then 2' of snow in Kalamazoo...and I'm not being terribly facetious..you know I'm right!
FROM JESSE: I guess I just don't get it. Again, we have a Plains/Midwest News/Blog which is updated 24/7, and today, even when there's not much going on, 3 out of 5 headlines and both graphics on our front page are about the Plains/Midwest, in fact the word Northeast is mentioned only once vs. Plains/Midwest 4 times.
Posted by Paul | December 26, 2009 10:33 PM
DoctorDave:
There is something clearly wrong with the NOAA snowfall map. It shows an area halfway between Dallas and Lubbock that got no snow. The Accuweather story entitiled "Snowfall history of the Bib Blizzard" has at least a foot of snow falling in the same place. Since I followed the snowfall on radar for that area, I know that the Accuweather map is correct. I wonder what why the NOAA map is not?
Posted by DoctorDave | December 26, 2009 6:31 PM
Eddie:
I wondered about that too. Why does Accu Weather only seem to hype storms on the East coast? There definitely seems to be more buzz when the storm is on the East opposed to the Midwest and Western States.
Posted by Eddie | December 26, 2009 3:35 PM
Bob:
All of the Accuweather experts routinely ignore the Midwest. East, West, South, even Canada get far more coverage. It seems that no one there ever heard of Chicago, St Louis or Indianapolis. We feel very left out.
FROM JESSE: Like I said above, you should read our Midwest/Plains news story which is updated with your weather every day.
Posted by Bob | December 26, 2009 11:52 AM
