Dec 29, 2015

Central US Winter Storm

Over the past several days (Dec 26 - Dec 28) a major winter storm hit the central US. Winter storm warnings stretched almost from the Canadian Border to the Mexican border:
Blizzard warnings were issued for west Texas, where up to two feet of snow fell (Queen). At Lubbock, 11" of snow fell, a state of emergency was declared, and a roof collapsed at a mall. Sleet accumulated to 3.4" at Rockford, IL and 4.8" at Springville, IA. 1" of freezing rain fell at Anthony Kansas and Kewanee, IL, but some areas had problems with just 0.25" of ice because of the strong winds: in the Peoria area 70,000 customers lost power, and a gas line was ruptured.

In Missouri, flooding closed parts of I-70 and I-44. 12.25" of rain fell at Union, MO, causing record flooding. At Springfield, MO the 6.03" that fell on December 26th was the second highest 24 hour total on record. The storm total there was exactly 10.00". At least 13 flood related fatalities occurred across Missouri.

On December 26th, tornadoes killed 11 in Texas. 8 of the fatalities were from an EF-4 that hit Garland, TX: