Historic winter storm spares Plateau its brunt
A winter storm that impacted areas from Dallas, TX, well into the lower New England area Friday and Saturday was historic for many locations, but spared Scott County its brunt as it trekked northeast.
Rain changed briefly to freezing rain — with associated thunderstorms — and then to snow late Friday night, ending Saturday morning after three inches had accumulated.
Travel on local roadways was hazardous for a period of time overnight and into Saturday morning, and several accidents were reported. However, the state roads were cleared by noon and many secondary roads had melted under the March sun by Saturday evening, though some slick spots redeveloped overnight Saturday due to the road surfaces re-freezing.
Local sporting events were postponed on Saturday, and several local churches opted to cancel Sunday morning services, but problems were otherwise few. A planned release of wild elk at Royal Blue Wildlife Management Area in eastern Scott County went off without a hitch Saturday morning, despite snow-slick roads in the Norma area.
Scott County — along with Morgan and Campbell counties — were initially placed under a heavy snow warning by the National Weather Service. That warning was upgraded to a winter storm warning after wintry precipitation began as a mixed bag that included sleet and freezing rain in addition to snow.
While the local area was none the worse for the winter storm, the first such storm of the 2007-2008 winter season, than it had been for a similar three-inch snow on Feb. 24, the storm was one of historic proportions in other areas.
Western Arkansas was hit particularly hard, with the county mayor in Scott County, which lies along the border with Oklahoma, declaring his county an emergency area after the weight of 18 inches of heavy snow damaged roofs, brought traffic to a halt on roadways blocked by fallen trees, and knocked out power to nearly the entire county.
In Memphis, NWS forecasters were calling the snow the city’s largest in 20 years after 7.2 inches of accumulation was recorded at Memphis International Airport.
In Birmingham, Alabama, the storm officially ended the longest “snow drought” in the city’s history. Weather forecasters recorded 0.1 inch of snow at Birmingham International Airport, ending the city’s snow-less streak at 2,225 days. The event marked the first time measurable snow had been recorded in Birmingham since Jan. 28, 2000.
The build-up to the winter storm had drawn comparisons to the March 1993 superstorm that produced a blizzard — with nearly two feet of accumulating snow — in Scott County and other areas in the Southeast. Like the Blizzard of ‘93, the weekend storm occurred on a Friday, the same weekend as the TSSAA high school girls basketball championships in Murfreesboro and the NASCAR race at Atlanta. While the storm would go on to produce blizzard conditions from northern Kentucky northward, it did not come close to packing the punch of the Blizzard of ‘93 anywhere in the Southeast, with the exception of portions of Arkansas.
The storm also produced severe weather, with the NWS’s Storm Prediction Center recording 17 reports of tornadoes in Georgia and Florida. Two persons were killed by a tornado near Lake City, Florida.