Storm leaves St. Louis in the dark

[Barb]

Now that hurricane season has ended quietly, all we have to fear is...blizzards.

massive storm system hits Midwest

Half a million people are without heat and at least 15 deaths have been blamed on this storm. Anyone here affected by this?

 

[GrnMarvl14]

Third highest snowfall on record here. Only a couple hundred people lost power across my state, though. One death. Everything but the most essential places shut down for two days (never seen that happen before). Plus we had rain, freezing rain, and sleet leading into the actual snow event. Luckily we seem to have gotten the lighter side of the entire event (5-8 inches of snow).

Was fun, though. I've never seen it snow for that long and that effectively before.

 

[Barb]

Aren't freezing rain and sleet the same thing?

 

[Rayne]

Aren't freezing rain and sleet the same thing?

Not really... not by a long shot. Sleet is what forms in the mid atmosphere, it begins as snow, melts and refreezes into ice pellets. Freezing Rain is just plain old rain that comes to rest on a freezing surface, eventually freezing.

Either way, both are potentially worse than snow as snow is the easiest to brush away.

As hard as it is to deal with the wintry weather, I would have loved a brisk snowstorm around here. The past few winters have been rather tepid, nothing really exciting since 2002.

 

[Barb]

Thanks for the clarification. I live south of the Mason-Dixon line and don't generally deal with anything worse than a random cold front.

 

[The Big Al]

Freezing rain is not exactly "plain old rain" it's actually super cooled rain. That is, rain that's below freezing but still liquid. It lands on a surface and they freezes on the spot. But that's splitting hairs.

Up here at Mount Pleasant we had near white out conditions on Friday and got a few inches of snow.

 

[Barb]

What exactly are 'white-out' conditions like? Zero visibility?

 

[The Big Al]

White-out conditions are defined as not being able to see the difference between the sky and the horizon. We didn't get that bad but there were time you could only make out shapes of building a few hundred meters away.