Weathering the storm

TORRINGTON – Reports are still trickling in, but indications are Goshen County and southeastern Wyoming has weathered the storm.
Accumulation amounts from the winter storm system that moved through the area last week ranged from three inches or less along the Wyoming-Colorado border to just shy of two feet in the center of the region, according to the National Weather Service in Cheyenne. Torrington was on the high side of the numbers, with 23 inches reported accumulations.
Likewise in the Wheatland and Chugwater areas, with reports ranging from 18 to 23 inches of snow by the time the system moved out of eastern Wyoming on Friday. And, for the amount of snow on the ground and in the air, the system caused few real problems, said Lt. Andy Fry, area supervisor for the Wyoming Highway Patrol in Wheatland.
“It was a pretty significant snow fall,” Fry said. “But I think, by and large, people stayed in or they slowed way down on the roads.
“It doesn’t sound like there was anything significant in terms of crashes or serious injuries,” he said. “It was more in the lines of slide-offs – people off the road that could be pulled out by a truck.”
While schools, government offices and a few businesses shut down Thursday and Friday, the overall impact of the storm in Goshen County was minimal, said Shelly Kirchhefer, County Emergency Management coordinator. There were no reports of power outages in the county, and no reports of serious accidents or injuries connected to the storm, she said.
“Travel was the biggest thing and getting snow removal out,” Kirchhefer said. County and state crews “did a pretty good job of
that overnight.
“We ended up closing schools so the county crews could get out and open some of those (rural) roads up,” she said. “They were drifted shut.”

Lance Green, maintenance supervisor for the Wyoming Department of Transportation in Torrington, agreed. It was all hands on deck, with crews on the roads starting about 4 a.m. Thursday morning to stay ahead of the system as it moved in, he said.
“It was slick, visibility was poor and it was snowing very heavy,” Green said. “Some of us put in 14 or 15 hours.”
Green’s crews worked the roads as late as they could Thursday, then were back out Friday morning, again working to stay ahead of the by-then dwindling system. About the only positive note was there wasn’t much wind, he said.
“When it gets dark and its still snowing, there’s not much else you can do,” Green said. “You have to give up so you can get up the next morning and hit it hard again.”
The system started early last week as a low-pressure area in the Gulf of Alaska, making landfall along the southern Oregon coast, said NWS meteorologist Jerry Claycomb in Cheyenne. From there, it tracked through Nevada into west central Colorado before swinging north and east into central Nebraska.
Early predictions on the storm didn’t reach the level of actual, final accumulations, particularly in the Torrington area. But that’s not really surprising, Claycomb said.
“We knew there was going to be a band set up somewhere,” he said. “But it’s almost impossible to forecast where that really intense band of snow is going to be.”
Snowfall amounts varied widely, in part because of the type of system driving the storm, Claycomb said. With an intense low-pressure system like the one behind this storm, there’s always going to a “shadowed area” directly below the center of the storm. This time, that shadow was along the Interstate 80 corridor between Cheyenne and Sidney, Neb.
The last storm moved into Iowa and on into the northeast after leaving eastern Wyoming, even as a second system was gearing up to move in early this week, Claycomb said. There was about a 25 percent chance of additional snow Monday night, with the system predicted to trigger high winds beginning Tuesday morning, which could extend throughout the rest of the week.
The Torrington area could expect winds gusting to as much as 40 miles per hour into today (Wednesday), he said. With the winds would come dry weather and gradual warming to near 40 by Thursday and into the 50s on Friday.
A storm like this one is no surprise come late February or early March, Green said. With this storm, however, colder temperatures actually served to minimize the impact of the typically wet snow.
“That’s kind of a good thing,” he said. Cold snow “doesn’t pack as much as it usually does. The next day it’s easier to get it back off.”
It’s been a while since a storm of this severity has hit Goshen County in February, Kirchhefer said. She couldn’t remember when the last one took place.
“We’ve had several in this area,” Kirchhefer said. “They all
meld together.”
And this was by no means the last gasp of winter, Claycomb said. The last storm of the season for the past few years has been on Mother’s Day, on May 10.
“We have about three more months of winter here before it’s all done,” Claycomb said. “Punxsutawney Phil lies around here.”