December and January 2011 saw multitudes of winter storms slam most parts of the US, except Central Oklahoma. Through the end of January the OKC area had only received a dusting of snow for the entire winter. On January 28th, I even had a cookout as we tied a record high at 76 degrees F. Late in the day on January 31st, a strong arctic cold front moved through and a surface low pressure deepened in NE TX. The result was a substantial blizzard that blanketed an over 2,000 mile swath of the U.S. with over a foot of snow. Most of the OKC metro saw around a foot of snow and blizzard conditions, with the heaviest amounts on the east side of town where I lived. I stopped by a friend’s house after work and almost got stuck on the way home in the whiteout. On February 1st, we had the first snow day in the 14 years I have worked at UPS. Unfortunately, since I was stuck at home with a 2WD vehicle I was unable to obtain much in the way of video.
On Feb. 2nd, I took Dylan sledding. Unfortunately, it would be the only time after that storm that I would be able to do so because I caught a bad case of the stomach flu that Dylan and Kellie had recently. That Friday Feb. 4th, another surprise upper low moved NE through northern TX, which resulted in 6+" of snow in N.TX and S.OK. We received another few inches of snow at my house, on top of the antecedent snow from the blizzard. On Feb 5th, we rode ATV's and sledded at Shaun and Steph's. My stamina and stomach had not quite recovered though, so I left early and Kel and Dylan stayed behind to enjoy the remainder of the evening.
Sunday Feb. 6th through Tuesday Feb. 8th saw sunshine and melting from the two storms. Early Feb. 8th, the third storm moved through and dropped another 6" in OKC, and over 20" through NC and NE OK. The airmass the followed this storm produced record low temperatures over the northern half of the state on Feb. 9th. The closest Mesonet site to my house, which is the Spencer site only a few miles away, registered a low of -9 F. At Will Rogers in OKC, a record low for the date was set at -5 F, which crushed the old record by 10 degrees. A large part of northern OK saw the mercury dip below -20 F, and at Bartlesville a new all-time record low of -28 F was set. Very shortly afterward, the Mesonet site at Nowata dropped even lower and the new all-time record low temperature for the state of OK was set at -31 F. Unbelievable! I have always wondered what it felt like to live in the arctic. ;-)
| Blizzard | Aftermath | Aftermath (Work) | Storm #2 | Blizzard Sled | Sledding/ATV | Storm #3 | Melting |