This was not just a bad storm; it was perhaps a once-in-ageneration event for many areas.
QUESTIONS FROM CATTLECON
WEATHER UPDATE
By Matt Makens Atmospheric Scientist
As a bit of a debrief, in the past I have reviewed the most common questions I was asked at CattleCon and written them here for those who are also curious. There were a few questions that kept coming up in Nashville, so let us take a dive into the three biggest topics on everyone’ s mind. How Historic Was the Winter Storm? If you are wondering whether Winter Storm Fern lived up to the hype( the name of winter storms comes from The Weather Channel), the answer is a resounding yes. This late January storm was one for the record books, and not in a good way.
Winter weather alerts stretched nearly 2,000 miles, from the Mexican border all the way into eastern Canada. About 230 million people, roughly two-thirds of the U. S. population, were under some kind of winter weather warning. By Jan. 26, snow blanketed more than half the lower 48 states, reaching one of the highest late-January snow coverages in modern satellite records. More than 20 state governors declared emergencies, and the National Guard was activated in a dozen states.
Communities across the country saw snowfall totals that broke records going back generations. Little Rock broke a daily snowfall record from 1899. Columbus, Ohio, topped a mark from 1988. Boston logged its eighth-highest snow accumulation ever. Even Toronto saw its biggest singleday snowfall since they started keeping records in 1937. This was not just a bad storm; it was perhaps a once-in-ageneration event for many areas.
Under the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’ s( NOAA) Regional Snowfall Index, which factors in population impact, the storm hit Category 3 status; the first time the Ohio Valley had seen that designation in a decade, and the first for the South in five years. Nearly 90 million people experienced 6 inches of snow or more, placing the storm among the largest population impacts from a snow event in modern records.
Tragically, 171 people lost their lives, from hypothermia, vehicle accidents, carbon monoxide poisoning, and other weather-related causes. It was the deadliest winter storm in North America since Winter Storm Uri knocked out Texas’ s power grid back in 2021.
This was not just a bad storm; it was perhaps a once-in-ageneration event for many areas.
More than a million customers lost power, with some areas, particularly in Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana, without power for more than a week. Nashville’ s electric utility recorded the most simultaneous outages in its entire history. The ice storm was particularly brutal across the South, snapping power lines and trees under the weight.
Air travel was heavily disrupted. On Jan. 25, more than 11,000 flights were cancelled, the worst day since the pandemic began in March 2020. By the time the storm cleared, more than 20,000 flights had been scrapped.
With damages topping $ 4 billion( estimate as of this writing), infrastructure knocked offline for days or weeks, and impacts felt from Mexico to Canada, Winter Storm Fern was not just historic, it was a benchmark weather event that many communities will be measuring future storms against for years to come. For those of us in agriculture who depend on predictable weather patterns, it was a stark reminder of how disruptive extreme winter weather can be to operations, supply chains and rural communities. How Bad is the Snowpack and Drought Situation Out West? If you are ranching in the West, you have probably spent a good chunk of this winter looking at the peaks and feeling a knot in your stomach. We all know the headlines can be reactionary, but the short answer here is a tough one: the snowpack situation is pretty grim, among the worst we have seen in decades, but there is a bit more nuance to the story than just“ it hasn’ t snowed.” www. NCBA. org NATIONAL CATTLEMEN 15