The forecasters got it half right

Wednesday's snow storm was everything it was cracked up to be. The forecasters had zeroed in on this storm when it was still out over the Aleutian Islands and predicted it to hit here more than a week in advance. That's pretty good forecasting, considering that they often miss forecasts only six hours away.

I was watching the storm move south to north on my computer at school after my last class on Wednesday and saw that heavy snow was at our doorstep. I left for home but didn't leave soon enough. By the time I got to the Republican River Valley Event Center, I could barely see beyond the hood of my car. As I turned on H Street and headed east towards home, I suddenly saw headlights coming at me in my lane but then I realized it wasn't my lane at all. I was in the other lane and quickly corrected back to my side. That's never happened to me before and it was a pretty scary thing. I negotiated the remaining half mile okay and was glad to get home. I parked my car facing south and haven't been in it since.

There were four heavy snow bands that came through McCook on Wednesday and the last one was in the middle of the night so I didn't get to see it. The third one came through around 9:30 and I thought it was worth taking a walk in it so I put on my heavy coat and headed out. I don't know how many of you have ever done that but it's an experience like no other. Thankfully, the winds were light with this storm for the most part so it was a lot like walking in the snow when I was a kid. The world is perfectly quiet during a heavy snow except for the flakes that are audibly hitting your body. It's one of the most peaceful things a person can do. I walked around for fifteen minutes or so before I came back in. I watched the heavy snow continue for the next hour or so until it started winding down and then went to bed.

I had just laid down when my cell phone beeped, announcing a text message, and when I looked at it, the message said that McCook Community College would be closed the next day. This was the first time since I came to town eighteen years ago that we were notified of the campus being closed the night before and it made for a much more peaceful sleep. College professors like days off too and especially when another nine to twelve inches of snow is predicted for the following day.

When I woke up on Thursday morning, there were three foot deep snow drifts on my deck so I knew another heavy band of snow had come through with wind after I went to sleep. Expecting more of the same, I settled in with a cup of hot chocolate and waited on the heavy snow that never came. Even though it snowed lightly throughout the day, we didn't get any more heavy bands of snow moving through McCook. We did get a brief moderate snow shower just before it stopped for good and I've seen that happen over and over during snowfalls. I don't know if there's a meteorological explanation for it or not but I've come to expect it.

So instead of the nine to twelve inches we were predicted to get on Thursday, we only got two to three inches which took our total up to around a foot. Nothing to sneeze at of course because that much snow will greatly benefit the farmers by putting needed moisture into the ground but it was far short of the potential two feet of snow that had been predicted. As it turns out, the heaviest snow fell in a relatively small band from extreme south central Nebraska into north central Kansas with the bull's eye being the 17 inches Hays, Kansas received.

So the forecasters got one day right and missed the other day. The frustrating thing is that they never changed the forecast on Thursday, although our snowfall yesterday never came close to Winter Storm conditions that were being advertised and they never changed the predicted snowfall amounts either. For any agency to be effective and trusted, they have to modify things on the fly and the National Weather Service never does that.

Another storm in predicted for our area on Sunday and Monday and they're currently advertising the possibility of an inch an hour snowfall, although total snowfall from the new storm hasn't been mentioned yet. An inch an hour snowfall piles up quickly so try and stay updated by listening to your local media or the Internet. And if you have access to live radar, watch the radar and you'll know more about what's going on than the forecasters are telling you.

A perpetual problem that exists with all government run programs is that they are cumbersome, bloated and slow to react and that applies to the National Weather Service too. But unlike most other governmental agencies, lives are at stake when they drag their heels.

I hope I can get my car out of the parking lot this morning. The last heavy snow we had, I couldn't.