Weather extremes.

Today and tomorrow we're having a blizzard here in Springfield. I came home from work at about 2:00 p.m. this afternoon, and the driving conditions were awful.

I was reflecting on some winter extremes I've experienced.  I think the coldest temperature I've ever experienced was in 1977 (January 16) when I was a child in Indianapolis, and the temperature dropped to -20 F (-28 C). There was a storm with high winds, so the wind chill was -40 F (-40 C).  I bundled up and went out in the storm to enjoy the white out conditions.  The most snow I've ever seen in a single snowfall must have been in the blizzard of 1978 (January 25-26), when we had 15-16 inches of snow in Indianapolis.  That was fun.

  This snow we're having today and tomorrow may exceed that record from my childhood, as the forecast is for anything from a total accumulation of 12-20 inches here.

   Some other records would be the hottest temperature I've ever experienced, which was 45 C (113 F) while in Tblisi, Georgia, in the old Soviet Union back in 1985.  That was hot.  The most rain I've ever seen was during  Typhoon Mindulle in early January of 2004.  It came over Taiwan and then just stalled for a few days and sat on top of the central and southern part of the island (I was in Chiayi), and dumped rain on us as its winds weakened.  We experienced about 900 mm (35 inches) in one day, but the rain was also very bad the day before and after that.  Up in the mountains there was considerably more rain, and I remember calculating that during the whole storm Ali Shan had received nearly 2000 mm (79 inches) of rain.

Postscript:  We had only 9 inches (according to some sources, although our local newspaper reports 13 inches as the total for Springfield), far below the minimum snow amount predicted, but still enough to make impressive drifts. Now we get bitter cold, but the low should only be -7 F (-22 C) tonight.