03.21.10
Busted!
The several-inch snowstorm and blizzard predicted for central Oklahoma was largely a bust.
In short, there wasn’t enough moisture for large snowflakes to form, so we just got a light snowfall with tiny flakes all day. The wind lived up to its billing, though; sustained winds yesterday (and today) were mostly in the 20s (the highest I saw was 31 mph) with gusts in the 30s (the highest was 40 mph). This brought the wind chill temperatures down to the low teens, so it felt quite cold last night!
Patrick Marsh (a fellow meteorology grad student at OU) has a nice write-up about the (lack of) winter storm on his blog.
We only got about an inch of accumulation in places around Norman, and I think most of that was from blowing snow. Snowfall totals were more accurate further north and east, though. See below for the NWS current observed snowfall totals.
It looks like we’ll be under a ridge for most of this coming week, so temperatures will quickly warm up again to the 60s.
In other news, the Iditarod finished up yesterday; defending champion Lance Mackey won his fourth race on Tuesday, and the final musher, Celeste Davis, rode in to Nome yesterday. It has warmed up to a toasty 20 °F in Nome.
Classes at OU start again tomorrow. Although I didn’t go anywhere outside Norman or Oklahoma City, or take too much time off, I did have a fairly relaxing, nice spring break. It’s hard to believe that there’s only another 7 weeks of class before summer…