2015 Thanksgiving Weekend Ice Storm Was a Whopper
The Thanksgiving Weekend ice storm will go down in history as being one of the worst Holiday weather disasters in the Central U.S. Power was cut to over 125,000 homes (nearly 400,000 people) in Oklahoma alone. Here's how it started on Thanksgiving Day:
The ice then expanded over Oklahoma and it kept raining for days. Here's a radar loop:
What was impressive about the storm was how long it lasted. Weather maps (below) showed freezing rain in the central Plains on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and even Monday mornings! As of Nov. 30, 75,000 were still without power. There would have been more, but the 2013 ice storm (which also affected this area) covered a much larger area.
Wichita essentially had a 3-day ice storm. The temperature was 33 or lower for 63 hourly weather obs this weekend in Wichita, 47 of those (75%) which contained rain, freezing rain or fog -- 27 out of the first 30 hours!
Oklahoma City, Ponca, and Salina, Kansas, also had ice for more than 24 hours early on in the storm:
This map from SevereMaps.com shows approximate ice amounts per NWS spotter and Social Media reports:
Here are some of the best photos, some showing several inches of ice accumulation! (By the way, the ice spiderweb photo is a hoax -- it's an old ice sculpture).
