Texas
On This Date: Plains Blizzard Hammers Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas | Weather.com
When you think of spring snow, perhaps the Rockies, Dakotas or northern New England come to mind first.
But on March 27, 2009, 16 years ago today, a textbook spring blizzard hammered parts of the Great Plains from Colorado and New Mexico to the Texas Panhandle, western and northern Oklahoma and Kansas.
The storm set all-time state 24-hour snowfall records in Kansas (30 inches in Pratt) and Oklahoma (26 inches in both Freedom and Woodward; later broken in a Feb. 2011 27-inch snowstorm in Spavinaw), according to weather historian Christopher Burt. Eleven inches of snow fell in Amarillo, Texas, and other parts of the Panhandle picked up over a foot of snow.
Winds gusting over 40 mph pushed the snow into drifts as high as 20 feet in Kansas, according to Burt. The huge drifts left virtually every road in northwest Oklahoma impassable for a time, some to the extent that bulldozers had difficulty clearing any path, according to the National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma. The weight of the feet of wet, heavy snow lead to some roof collapses, as well. Federal disaster aid was requested for four hard-hit northwest Oklahoma counties.
As this was happening, dozens of tornadoes tore through parts of the South from eastern Texas to Kentucky and the Carolinas. These 56 twisters, along with hail and damaging thunderstorm winds, from March 25-29 was responsible for $2.4 billion in damage, according to a NOAA estimate.
Large snow drifts are seen in Arnott, Oklahoma, following the late March 2009 blizzard in the Plains.
(Bryan Hajny via NWS-Norman, Oklahoma)
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
The overseas death of a U.S. Army soldier from Central Texas is under investigation, the Department of Defense announced Wednesday.
Sgt. Devin A. Seibel, 26, of the Waco suburb of Robinson, died Sunday in a “training‑related incident” at Erbil Airbase in Iraq, officials said.
According to the department, Seibel was an active‑duty soldier supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led coalition campaign launched in June 2014 to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria.
Seibel was assigned to the Air Ambulance Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Combat Aviation Brigade, in Fort Carson, Colo.
The department didn’t release any additional information.
CBS News Texas will provide updates as more information becomes available.
No. 1 seed Texas (51-12, 16-8 in SEC play) and No. 3 seed Texas Tech (61-8, 21-3 in the Big 12) begin their three-game series at 8 p.m. ET Wednesday in Oklahoma City. Each
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