Xylia packs a punch

By: 
Jason Ferguson

After a largely snow-free winter, Old Man Winter returned in a big way, dumping up to 24 inches of snow in Custer County Sunday into Monday as the entire region was engulfed by Winter Storm Xylia.
The storm caused late openings and closures throughout the county. Custer School District called off school Monday for both the Custer and Hermosa schools, and the Custer County Courthouse closed as well. By Monday morning city and county crews were hard at work opening roads, which created massive windrows in downtown Custer.
Matthew Bunkers, meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Rapid City, said most, if not all, of Custer County, received at least a foot of snow. Other area readings as of Monday morning included 10.5 inches in Hill City, nine inches at Mount Rushmore National Memorial and six inches in downtown Rapid City. Hot Springs received 22 inches, Rockervile 10 inches and Pine Ridge seven inches.
Flights were cancelled Monday morning out of Rapid City Regional Airport.
The storm created even more havoc south of South Dakota, and brought things to a halt in parts of Wyoming—particularly southeast Wyoming—down to the Denver area and the Panhandle of Nebraska. Reports of up to three feet of snow in the area of Cheyenne, Wyo., were received.
In Wyoming the storm forced the closure of most of Interstate 80 and all of Interstate 25 by Saturday morning, according to a story in the Casper Star Tribune.
As the storm progressed, most of the highways in the eastern and southern parts of the state closed as well. By Sunday morning, all of the highways leaving both Casper and Cheyenne — the state’s two largest cities — had shut down. Officials in both communities, as well as many other towns, urged people to stay home due to the dangerous conditions.
The Star Tribune reported nearly 26 inches of snow had fallen as of noon Sunday in Cheyenne and 30 inches was reported later that day. That broke the previous record for two-day snow totals for Wyoming’s capital city, set in 1979, according to the Cheyenne office of the National Weather Service. Denver had its fourth-heaviest snowstorm on record after it piled up 27.1 inches. Xylia’s top total is an estimated 52.5 inches at 7,900 feet in Wyoming’s Laramie Range, according to Weather.com.
In Sioux Falls, snow blew into traffic lights at intersections, making it impossible for drivers to tell if the lights were red, yellow or green, KELO reported.
Drifts as high as five feet were reported in both Laramie and Cheyenne, the Wyoming Department of Transportation reported. Cheyenne officials advised residents to shelter in place.
The unusually powerful winter storm knocked out power to thousands of Rocky Mountain Power customers, the company reported. There were no reports of storm-caused power outages in Custer County.
Bunkers said a storm like this that moves in from the southwest has access to a lot more moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, which in turn can fuel the wet, heavy snow the region saw from Xylia.

User login