Friday's Internet Edition, July 04, 2008.
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| Turtleback in winter white.... This familiar landmark was covered with snow following the storm. |
- Winter finally arrived in Van Horn and when it hit, it shut down roads and the Interstate, filled local motels, swamped the Convention Center and had trucks (18 wheelers) parked everywhere.
We got a taste of the blast over the weekend when we received 1.11 inches of rain and melted snow (1”). It looked like it might put a damper on everything but the temperatures never dipped down low enough for that spell to cause any real problems.
Then late Monday night, the snow began to fall. As it was falling, so was the temperature. By Tuesday morning, the Van Horn area had from 6” to 8” of snow and the temperature hovered around 25 degrees.
The combination of cold temperatures and the snowfall resulted in massive congestion here. Authorities closed Interstate 10 at Fort Hancock and Fort Stockton and they closed Interstate 20 at Pecos.
However, before the decision was made to close the roads, traffic was enroute to Van Horn where it was stuck. Our motels quickly filled up and the Convention Center was opened to assist folks traveling on buses that were stranded here.
Trucks were parked everywhere in town. The truck stops were all full and the overflow parked wherever they could. Pilot Truck Stop alone had over 200 trucks.
Culberson Hospital EMS had their hands full responding to accidents in Culberson and Hudspeth Counties. At one point, they even stationed units at Plateau and Allamoore to reduce the driving times while responding to accidents.
The Culberson EMS reports that they responded to 20 accidents during the period and transported a total of 8 folks to the local hospital.
Russ Wyatt, County Emergency Management Coordinator, reported that all “emergency response personnel, EMS, Sheriff’s office, and DPS, held meetings in preparation for the wintery blast, and as a result things went pretty smoothly.”
Wyatt further added, “we had lots of help during this event from a lot of people.”
This writer decided to check the calendars for January , 2007 and compare it to January, 2006. What we found was amazing, as we tend to forget what happened a year ago.
In this case, however, January 2006 was much warmer, with an average daytime high of nearly 60 degrees. Nighttime temperatures were a little warmer too. And, there was no precipitation in January, 2006.
January, 2007 is a different story. Thus far, our average daytime high temperature has been only 48.04 degrees. The average nighttime temperature has been 28.83 degrees. We’ve had 1.71” of rainfall and melted snow from two snows totaling 7”.
No wonder, it seems cold outside!
Fortunately for us, by shortly after 1 p.m. Tuesday, the sun was peaking out, the temperature had warmed above 32 degrees and the wind had stopped blowing. All these factors led to rapidly clearing roads and the Interstate and other roads in and out of the city were opened to traffic.
And the traffic exited town nearly as fast as it poured into town during the early morning hours on Tuesday.
And, the weather forecast is calling for another bout of freezing rain mixed with snow by today or tomorrow. Will the wintery blast ever end? Yes, and we’ll all be wishing for it in June when the temperature hits 100 + degrees!