Monday, March 30, 2009
Weather columnist Kevin Myatt: Texas-like extremes don't occur here often
Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.
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@roanoke.com
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It was still 69 degrees as the sun set on Amarillo, Texas, after a toasty high of 72 degrees Thursday. But Friday morning would bring a much different scene to the Texas Panhandle city: snow, falling hard and drifting deep, and 19 degrees.
A strong upper-level low pressure system combined with a push of Arctic air brought heavy, wind-blown snow to a swath of Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas.
The wide open High Plains that extend hundreds of miles east of the Rockies offer virtually no geographical buffers against moving air masses.
"Blue northers" plunge from the Arctic Circle to western Texas with, as the saying goes, nothing but barbed wire to stop them. Muggy air from the Gulf of Mexico often surges just as easily northward over the wheat fields and tumbleweed, setting up the Plains as "Tornado Alley" from April to June.
In Southwest Virginia, the Appalachian Mountains often serve as a buffer against such extreme drops or rises in temperature. A 53-degree plunge in 12 hours would be exceedingly rare. Cold air masses from the northwest and warm air masses from the southwest each have to work their way over and around the ridges and hollers of the Appalachians, and are usually much more gradual in their onset.
Six years ago today, on March 29 and 30, 2003, Roanoke got fairly close to the Amarillo scenario, going from a high of 76 to a low of 31 with 6 inches of snow. Earlier this month, Roanoke did a 70-degree rise in four days, from a snow-chilled low of 13 on March 3 to a balmy high of 83 on March 7.
While the Texas Panhandle was dealing with snow drifts of up to 14 feet on Friday, the other side of Texas was experiencing a different season altogether. Harlingen and McAllen, near the Rio Grande, each topped 100 degrees.
