March 7, 2008

 After reading some comments via e-mail and on this blog, I wanted to clear up any possible confusion about the heavy early March snows. When I speak of “record snowfall”, I did not say that this was an all-time record.

For instance, weather records can be for the day, such as “the coldest temperature ever on March 6”; they can be monthly, as in “a record rainfall for the month of May”, or they can be all-time...as in “the hottest temperature ever recorded in Durant”. Of course, records can be for periods like “the winter season”, “the past 30 years”….there’s lots of way to slice the “records” loaf.

 Regarding the two snow events of March 3 and March 6, 2008, they were without question DAILY records for snow amounts.

They are NOT all-time records, as I mentioned in my previous blog.  They might be monthly records for March, but I'm still trying to gather the snowfall records for Grayson County so it's not clear yet. A second record established was the occurrence of two heavy snow events so close together. They were also in the top 10 snow events of all time for Grayson and Cooke Counties, where 9” of snow was observed in some locations.

There has never been a case (that I could find documented) of two 6”-9” snowfalls in Texoma only three days apart. There have been heavier individual snows, but not this close to each other.

 So you can tell friends and family that don’t live around here that we set three records:

1)      Greatest snowfall for dates of March 3 and March 6

2)      Record for two heavy snows so close together

3)      Top ten heaviest snowfall ever in 9” snow areas

Take Care,

 Steve LaNore

Chief Meteorologist