A major blizzard blasted Iowa on December , For instance, it took a few forecasters at least 3 times longer to make it to work to cover their shift on that snowy Tuesday into Wednesday and a couple even stayed the night in the office on cots to wait out the storm! A recently hired intern had the task of measuring snowfall in the blizzard and when she went out at midnight Tuesday night on the 8th, she learned the hard way to always bring her security card with her in order to re-enter into the building as she locked herself out.
Other forecasters remember being snowed-in and digging out 6 foot drifts from their driveways on Wednesday. The storm began early Tuesday morning on December 8th when light to moderate snowfall extended across central to southern Iowa. The snow slowly spread over the rest of the state and intensified during the afternoon and evening hours and significantly a ffected the Des Moines rush hour Tuesday night.
Strong northwest winds increased to 25 to 35 mph and gusted to over 50 mph at times by late Tuesday night and continued into early Wednesday morning. There were even a couple of reports of wind gusts to 60 mph overnight Tuesday into Wednesday. The strong winds and heavy snow produced large drifts throughout the state, with several reports over 6 feet!
Visibility became reduced significantly as widespread whiteout conditions were observed from the overnight hours Tuesday into Wednesday before improving Wednesday afternoon. Travel became impossible or nearly impossible across much of Iowa due to the large drifts and widespread white-out conditions See Figure 1.
Figure 1. Figure 2. Figure 3. The powerful storm dropped anywhere from 8 to 17 inches over much of Iowa with the highest swath oriented southwest to northeast across the state See Figure 2. In fact, the statewide average storm total snowfall was Some of the higher totals around the state included The severity of the storm affected the surrounding states of Iowa as well.
