We got about 5 inches of very light snow on Monday (fairly cold so the moisture holding content of the snow was low). Perfect stuff for high winds to pick up and blow across the state. And so it did.
Drove home from work through a blizzard warning today. The NWS toyed with us the past couple of days saying first Thurs. we were in a blizzard watch area and then last night they upgraded to "winter weather advisory". Sometime between this morning and early afternoon they decided it was actually going to be a blizzard "warning". The drive was actually sort of anti-climatic for me because I had mostly decent visibility most of the way. Some of my colleagues I think got hit with snow squalls while driving so had to tough out much worse, near white-out conditions. So it goes (in South Dakota)...
It will interesting to see what the landscape is sculpted into this weekend. There will probably be places with 8-10 foot drifts and lots places with almost no snow. Depending on the spring, some of the snow in these drifts may linger in places until April. The pheasants, deer, and the rest of the critters hunker down and ride out these storms but depending on the rest of the winter, such events can set them up for high losses. This is especially true for the pheasants (being an exotic bird to North America). Late heavy wet snow blizzards followed by a cold spell can really hammer them. They tend to suffocate as their nostrils get plugged up and then freeze. I can only hope that the great white wolf actually hasn't returned here this winter...
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