see you in the spring!

[Freightman]

Forecast is for 27" and 50 mph wind forthe week end so lf this happens it will bury us. See you

[Circuit Rider]

Good luck Freightman, Hey I know the Country Barn moved to the west part of town about 10 years ago. It is still in operation. Ate there a couple of times, didn't think it was as good as when they were on the east side, maybe just me. CR

[Freightman]

They went belly up about two years ago.If the fkorecast is right it will rivel 1957 and that killed or displaced 100,000 head of cattle. I'm

[Geezer in NH]

27 inches of WHAT? snow? you guys are P&&&Y

[TXGunNut]

Yep, 27" in Amarillo means drifts bigger than trucks. I'm headed south to watch the ocean and eat seafood, mebbe do a little hunting.

[starmac]

27 inches of WHAT? snow? you guys are P&&&Y

LOL, You have never seen a West Texas or Eastern New Mexico blizzard, just nothing for miles to slow the wind. Fences mean exactly nothing to cattle in those storms, plus there isn't any where near adequate snow removal equipment in the whole state of Texas to even think of keeping even I 40 open.

Freightman, hope you have the neccissities stocked up to do for a week or so, just the chance of this storm in the news should clear the grocery store shelves.
Ya jest gotta love Armadillo. lol

[David2011]

LOL, You have never seen a West Texas or Eastern New Mexico blizzard, just nothing for miles to slow the wind.

Isn't that the truth! I like TxGunNut's plan- wish I could be somewhere else for a few days while this blows through. Forecast at our hunting lease near San Angelo includes 1"-3" of ice. Interstate 40 is notorious for tractor-trailer rigs blowing over (yes, on their sides) during winter storms. West TX/Eastern NM Winter weather can be pretty nasty but it usually only lasts a few days before melting. Sure can cause a lot of damage while it's going on, though.

David

[starmac]

I was running a wrecker on I40, mostly on the NM side one particular storm, 2 1/ days without any break. Texas was so backlogged they were telling even folks with injuries, it would be better and quicker if their vehicle was still mobile to try and make the state line for help.
I had one guy stop me at the state line rest area, he had rolled a ryder rental van broke all the windows out and blown one tire, it landed on it's wheels, and the troopers told him the fastest help would be to get on across the state line if he could. lol He ask me about towing his vehicle, and I informed him he was probably at least 12 hours out, he ask about an ambulance, I told him, with just a busted arm, he was out of luck there, but he could ride with me, and I would get him to the hospital.
The daily average for trucks used to be 6000 trucks a day there, not sure of the traffic count for four wheelers, but anytime the interstate closed, folks were stranded by the thousands.

[runfiverun]

Dang I'm supposed to be heading down that way come Monday.
27" is a lot anywhere we got a bit more than that in 6 hrs about 8 years ago.
nobody went nowhere, and we deal with snow on a daily basis in the winter.

[David2011]

It was really nice in SE NM today, the calm before the storm. Since this is forecast to be the last day for a wile that it's not blowing 20-30 I went to the range to test some ammo and re-check the sighting in of a couple of rifles that are shooting different bullets. I needed nothing more than Dockers and a long sleeved shirt to be comfy warm. When I got home I put out some scratch grain and alfalfa cubes for the quail, bunnies, dove and jackrabbits to stock up for the next few days. Our snow predictions have been increased; might snow for 36 hours. I'm about 160 miles south of I-40 and not expecting but 18-20".

David

[dragon813gt]

27" is a lot anywhere we got a bit more than that in 6 hrs about 8 years ago.
nobody went nowhere, and we deal with snow on a daily basis in the winter.

Yep, two feet would shut down the North East for at least two days. And we have the equipment to remove if. I wish you guys luck if the storm dumps that much. Best thing to do is stay inside and ride it out. Just thinking of shoveling two feet makes my arms hurt ;)

[Uncle R.]

Here in Wisconsin we ain't much afraid of snow.
We respect it, but we ain't afraid.
Much.
I've seen nasty storms where the drifts were taller than the county plow trucks and they couldn't push through.
Not a big deal, they send in the rotary plows, or use front end loaders and move it like it was a pile of dirt.

I have to admit with all of our experience and equipment 27 inches and high winds would make a heckuva mess.
Probably shut near everything down for a couple of days, or until the winds dropped down.
Good luck down there and I hope you're well stocked with food, fuel, firewood and batteries.

Uncle R.

[MaryB]

Sounds like winter on the MN western prairie! I have had a drift reach the peak of my house at 25 feet. Neighbors kids were sledding off my roof! At least until I showed them the melting cavity from the warm house that they would fall into!

[popper]

Several years ago - made it to the state line @ 5pm, Amarillo by midnite, Dallas by 9AM. The nuts with DOT scraped all the snow off the ice on I40, left all the cinder piles alone under the snow. Guess they didn't want to pay to buy more. Got a pic of my younger bo. in the 60's, half way up the vertical wall in the parking lot on Rainier. Was told they skii out of the 3rd story window there.

[montana_charlie]

As I recall, it was the winter of either '49 or '50 and about the middle of October.

My little brother Patrick (he was the smart one) and I were sure hopin' for some fresh snow because it makes it so easy to see rabbit tracks. This was back in a year when Daddy was makin' a little money from time to time, so we were able to buy a few shells for our shotgun. It was the following year that we had to start usin' a bucket of black paint to get our rabbits…but that is another story.

Now it doesn't snow often in the Panhandle of Texas and when it does, it generally gets a couple of inches deep. And that was just perfect for trackin' cottontails over on the west side of Henry Goodall's woodlot, where they were as thick as spots on a Bluetick.

So this one Friday night (no school the next day) the man on the radio said it might do some snowin' before morning. Well, after supper we got our chores done and cleaned that shotgun 'til it looked like it was made of solid silver...the blue had wore off years before…then we hit our bunks so we could get up before light.

Well, the wind just howled all night long. That's the same wind that blows out of the west every day of the year (and there are stories about that, as well). Anyway, the next morning the whole country was white, but that wind had drifted the snow 'til it was so hard we wondered if tracks would even show. Mama had left a pot of beans on the back of the stove for us so we choked down enough to see us 'til lunch and headed out. We were wearing our old 'blanket coats' that were real warm even if they did fit a little funny. Patrick had on Dad's old hunting cap and I was wearing the silver-belly that I was born in and had it pulled down so my ears were inside. Made it fit kinda tight, but it was warm! I really loved that hat...I just hoped that someday I could afford to get a brown or black one to wear in the winter. Silver-belly (white) is for summertime...anybody with enough sense to buy a good hat knows that. But it turned out that Patrick and I still had three years to go before we actually had some cash money of our own...and that's another story, too.

Well it didn't take us long to reach Goodall's moving over that snow which was almost as hard as asphalt, plus it was downhill the whole way...which is sayin' something for a place as flat as the Panhandle. That snow was way too hard to take a rabbit track, but we managed to get two bucks and a fat doe. (Funny how they use the same words for deer and rabbits) And, best of all, when we swung down to that thick patch of woods on the crick, Patrick nailed a dinner-sized hen turkey. He was mighty glad that it had been his turn to carry the gun when she tiptoed out of that mesquite thicket. And with that we headed home with supper…and a bird for Thanksgivin’ dinner, just a few days away.

We figured that the hard snow would make it too slippery to go back up the way we had come, so we headed down Goodall's drive to take the county track back to our place. We'd done about two miles up the county road when I saw ‘my winter hat’ laying out in Cletus Jenkins’ horse pasture. There wasn't a soul around, not even one of his Morgan studs. And that brown Resistol was just a-layin' there sayin', "I'm yours...come and try me on."

Well, I covered that quarter mile like a scalded dog and slid to a stop on my knees with my tremblin' hands lightly strokin' that 5X beaver. I think there was a tear in my eye when I picked that hat off the snow, but I started to bawl when I saw Clete lookin up at me! He started shoutin' real loud at me 'cause with my ears covered up he thought I was one of the Tuttle kids. You know they have that problem with their ears…
Well, the shoutin' brought me to my senses so I asked Clete what on earth he was doin' up to his nose in a snow drift. He said as how he had spent the night looking for his boy's 4H heifer and that when the snow started it came down so hard and so fast that he just got bogged down…and then the wind almost buried him in it. He said he was getting kinda nervous because he figured with the county fair goin’ on, nobody would come down the road 'til after dark.

Now Patrick had some of his 'experimental post hole seed' in his pocket so he planted a half dozen of them around Clete but they wouldn't 'take' in the snow. They might have done the job but Patrick was still figuring out how they worked. (I’ll tell you about those, sometime.) So I said I would scamper back to Goodall's and find a shovel to dig him out. I hadn't gone two steps when he hollered STOP real loud. (He’d forgot that I wasn't one of the Tuttles.) Then in a normal voice (that was kinda hard to understand 'cause his lips were getting numb) he said, "Charlie, you git home and tell yore Dad to come out with some help 'cause not only am I leadin' my boy's heifer, I'm sittin' on my best Morgan stud…and he's startin to take a chill!"

The next day, Clete came by the house and gave me that brown Resistol of his. He went on to allow that he figured I’d grow up to be as worthless as my Daddy, but it was sickening to see a four year old kid, who was six feet tall, runnin’ around in the winter wearin’ a white hat!

I still wear it every winter and remember Clete and how he froze to death the following December when all the thermometers broke…but, maybe you already heard about that cold snap.

Charlie Maxwell

[fryboy]

in places that usually get snow ... they're more used to dealing with it and it's effects , my first foray to the north east was in late fall one year , being a country boy from the wind scoured high plains i was amazed that 1-2" could not only cripple D.C. but in effect shut it down - this with no wind
about those fences out here ... pretty sure that all the ones north of me blew down ...
btw ? thanks for the grins charlie ! took me down my own memory hole ( and sadly a few bitterly cold ones as well lolz )

[funnyjim014]

In Buffalo we get 27in of snow you better leave early to make it to work on time. Nov 2014 was the worst. 4ft on tuesday night and 4 more wed night. With the drift the back side of my nabors house was gone lol. I fell off my roof times shoveling....2ft fall but a 30ft walk in 8ft of snow. I do see how drifting can be bad in the desert. We get the same thing off lake Erie

[quilbilly]

This is an amazing weather winter. The El Nino storms that usually head into S. California are farther south across Mexico and into Texas. The usual SE Alaska storms are south into my area into N. Calif. where the last six weeks have seen record precip. but the drought is still on in S. Calif. The snow pack in the N. Nevada mountains are way above normal so my plans for after NCBS may be on hold for a year (my haunts for June may not be snow free until mid-July). The storms in the Bering Sea have been epic and if they continue, my friends in the crab fleet may not get out of Dutch Harbor much for Opilio crabs next month. Amazing.

[GOPHER SLAYER]

In 1958 I was driving back to California on I 40 or 66, whatever it was at that time. I had two women and two little kids in the car. We were in northern NM on the high plateau east of Albuquerque. It began to snow large flakes, as big as a quarter. After a while the snow began to rub the bottom of the car and then traffic came to a halt. I saw large trucks lying on their side in a snow bank. Traffic was backed up as far as you could see in either direction. As suddenly as the snow started, it stopped. Trucks loaded with sand came out from Cline's Corner and drove along throwing the sand under the wheels of the big rigs. Slowly the traffic began to move but every vehicle was on the wrong side of the road. Nobody seem to care. We soon came down off the high ground and I drove home with no further difficulty. This happened two weeks after Easter. If you are going to travel that route, do it in the summer or early fall.

[Superfly]

Please let that snow hit my HOUSE PLEASE

[popper]

So how much so far freightman? I heard about 18". Wife's nephew got back from Lubbock in time, 40 is closed to Albuquerque, was 82F yesterday, tornado hit about 1/2 mile from close friends home (bout 5 mi away) but they are OK. That sucker near hit bass pro, jumped 2 lakes and then on up to blue ridge. Son is leaving for Garden City tomorrow, then to South fork. I tell him to keep the tank full and take food & blankets. Haven't seen this weird weather for years.

[starmac]

Went down to my daughters in Wasilla for christmas, just got back in fact. I thought I was back in the panhandle, NO WHITE CHRISTMAS, just dead grass in Alaska, it just wasn't right.

[David2011]

The storm started with heavy pellets of sleet building about 1-1/2" of ice. Asphalt and concrete were cold enough that it stuck and stayed solid from the outset. After that it snowed for about 36 hours. The natural New Mexico prairie out behind the yard and workshop only had a few inches of snow. It was very dry snow and the wind blew 35-50 gusting to 60 during much of the snowfall so in open areas there was little accumulation. The wind caused drifts that shut down every highway for 200 miles to the west and north and 100 miles to the east. Even on my property I have bare spots and 100 feet away a drift over 8 feet high. Got lots of bunny tracks, too.


David

[MaryB]

Good time for bunny hunting! I like going out after a fresh snow where I can see where they are traveling. So far my corner of MN has dodged the worst snow and winds. Maybe 5 inches total and minor drifting. In the winter of 96/97 the drifts reached the peak of my 2nd story roof. 1 story homes were buried and many collapsed when the trusses in the roof let go.

[big bore 99]

Good story Charlie. Thanks for sharin' it. Reminded me of the time I went rabbit hunting by myself after a blizzard when I lived up in central Illinois. I was following some tracks and the snow had drifted up against a cliff and I walked on over it and went down about six feet. Took me awhile to get out of there.