We watched the forecast come together for a good 7 or 8 days. It looked like a storm system would affect the Central Plains. It looked like it could be cold enough to snow. Then it started to look like it could be a bit windy. I had the good fortune of working the forecast desk on Monday and issuing the Winter Storm Watch for my area, drawing my axis of heaviest snow right over my Omaha, which was later converted to a Winter Storm Warning and then to a Blizzard Warning for Wednesday and Wednesday night.
And then Wednesday came. Light rain began around 1:00 PM, and it began to mix with snow about an hour later. By about 2:30 PM, we were getting mostly snow — a heavy, wet, sticky snow. We got several inches of snow before the wind kicked up, much of it in the form of big, pretty flakes and just enough light breeze to move them around like the inside of a gently shaken snow globe. We even saw lightning and heard thunder — thundersnow! By mid-evening, winds were increasing, and the snow took on the look of finer grains that had been shattered by collisions in the wind. (For a cool time lapse taken from our front window, head here.)
The fruits of our mid-storm labor: The frosted cookies
And then the power flickered. We were frosting our Christmas sugar cookies, and we looked at each other with our attention grabbed but our concern low. In my four years in Omaha and three years in Iowa, I had never lost power… even through three or four blizzards and a handful of severe thunderstorms. The lines in our neighborhood are buried, and Nebraska isn’t exactly a haven of trees.
I grew up in rural northern Michigan, which is pretty much the opposite of Nebraska, with abundant trees and above-ground wires. Power outages were simply the norm up there, in all seasons. We stoked the fire in the wood stove during outages. We ran water when storms were coming (either the thunder or the winter varieties) so that we could power-flush the toilets and wash ourselves, since we got our water from well that required an electric pump. I was used to outages there.
But when the lights went out between 10-11 PM on Wednesday, we were absolutely unprepared. We frosted the last of our cookies in the dark, washed the dishes, and kept the gas fireplace running to provide a little heat. We put on warm jammies and got deep under the covers. We normally keep our house on the cool side to conserve energy, so we didn’t have far to fall to get into the lower 50s by morning in the house. We woke to no power. After shoveling the deck and blowing snow off the driveway, we took our dog to the doggy day care so that he would have a warm place to play, and we headed to work. I ran the space heater about 3 feet from me for the rest of the morning.
I didn’t wake up to ice crusting over my comforter. I didn’t have to break ice in the water pail to melt for washing my face. I was cold while getting dressed, but I couldn’t see my breath inside. When it comes right down to it, I was inconvenienced for about 12 hours. I didn’t have to endure worse for six months.
And best of all — I knew it was coming. Not just because I’m a meteorologist, either — I’m pretty sure everyone in Omaha (and the rest of Nebraska and Iowa) knew it was coming. We have the ability to see storms like these for about a week in advance. Imagine how much hay Pa could have hauled if he knew when the next storm was coming, or how much that information would have helped Almanzo and Cap make the seed wheat run. We might lack some of the details, like when rain would change to snow or which area within about a 100 mile width would get that heaviest band of snow. But we can get the flavor of the storm, and we can do a darn good job tracking it.
By the way, west Omaha got under that heaviest snow band, and we got a good 8″ or more of heavy snow. Our winds gusted to about 45-50 mph. I don’t know yet if it will go in the books as a blizzard, but it was a heck of a winter storm.
And thankfully, my power is back on and I can tell the story!