A rather potent Arctic front had come through the area dropping temperatures from 40 degrees on Tuesday to 20 degrees by 8am Wednesday morning. The temperature hovered at 20 degrees all day Wednesday and then slowly began to drop into the teens towards Wednesday evening. The temperature remained in the teens Thursday afternoon and hit a low of 4 degrees by midnight Thursday. The temperature didn't budge at all Friday with a high of 4 degrees above zero. By Christmas morning (Saturday) the temperature had fallen to 12 below zero, but we quickly warmed to 21 for the afternoon high.
Light snow continued to fall Wednesday afternoon and evening, but it didn't add much to the 10 inches. However, by 8pm the snow began to fall once again and the winds picked up out of the North with gusts to 30mph. Conditions were bad. The snow was so dry and powdery that it was difficult to tell what was falling and what was blowing. It didn't really matter though, the snow was piling up fast. The drifts around my home were the highest I'd ever seen and the storm had really just begun. By midnight Wednesday, 18 inches of snow had fallen. The winds continued to howl out of the North overnight.
Television weather forecasters on channel 8 were reporting lightning strikes on the Northeast side of Indianapolis, but I did not hear any rumbles of thunder or see and flashes of lightning here in Franklin county. Maybe next time.
Around 4am on Thursday morning, I woke up to see how the storm was brewing and saw my neighbor trying to head towards Laurel in his Ford Explorer. I later found out that he was called in to work to begin plowing snow. Anyway, he managed to get out of his lane and up to my house, but he couldn't get past the mailboxes. You could smell the rubber on the tires burning from spinning so fast. The snow was so deep, he was actually plowing it. He ended up turning around and heading back home.
When I woke up Thursday morning around 7am, the winds had subsided some and the snow had ended except for a few flurries. The sun was trying to peek through the clouds. The storm was over. Now it was time to dig out. Since my back door was buried in snow it was impossible to push the storm door out. I had to crawl through a window to exit out onto the back deck. Once out, I measured 26 inches of snow. I had never in my life seen so much snow fall in one storm. It was beautiful.
Around 9am I saw my neighbor once again trying to head towards Laurel and once again you could smell the burning rubber from the tires. He made it through this time, but he was the only vehicle I'd see go past the house until 3pm that afternoon. At that time, a road grader and two plow trucks came through to clear the road of snow. That was great, but my drive was still buried under the snow and I had a lot of shoveling yet to do. The snow between my house and the garage was waist deep and I'd been shoveling through it all day long.
Christmas Eve morning arrived and mom and dad's lane had yet to be plowed. Dad called me around 10am and asked if I'd go to town to pick up some diesel fuel and gasoline and to pick up his second cousins daughter in Laurel. She had been staying with a friend and became stranded once the storm hit. I managed to get out of my drive, but there was not way I'd get back to dad's house even in 4 wheel drive. The lane was buried under the two feet of snow. I parked at the end of the lane and watched from a distance as Dad tried to scoop up the snow with his tractor and make a path to the road, but it was taking forever. Thankfully, my brother-in-law showed up in his BIG tractor and front end loader. With a round bale on the back for weight, he plowed through the snow like it wasn't even there clearing a path down the lane to dad's house. What he managed to do in 5 minutes would have taken dad the rest of the day to do with his tractor.
This will be storm to remember for the rest of my life. A lot of people compared this to "The Blizzard of '78", but there really wasn't any comparison except for the amount of snow that had fallen. This storm far exceeded the blizzard's snowfall.
I'm writing this on New Year's Eve and for the most part, this record snowfall is nothing but a muddy memory. The temperature over the last four days hasn't dropped below 41 degrees and the high for the last two days has been 54. This wasn't only the largest single 24 hour snowfall for the area, but I think it must be the quickest to melt away too.
To view images of the storm, click here.
To return to the Northwest Franklin County Weather page, click here.