Murphy High School teacher Leland Howard tries to salvage items where his algebra classroom once stood in a temporary building at Murphy High School as residents clean up and assess the damage from a Christmas Day tornado Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012 in Mobile, Ala. With only a handful of injuries and no deaths reported statewide from the storms, the head of the state's emergency response said it was difficult to fathom how the toll wasn't worse. (AP Photo/G.M. Andrews)
Kreg Callery walks in the snow near Cherry Street on his lunch break Friday. MIKE SIMONS/Tulsa World
We’ve talked a lot about how this week’s Christmas Day snowstorm
missed us and
tore up the east, but the same system produced deadly tornadoes in the south. It was an odd weather day.
But before I get to that: HEY! Did you see that snow earlier today? It snowed! It really did! It was a sneaky little snow event, too. We were forecast to get a little moisture on Friday, but a band of snow came together over western Oklahoma and actually made it to the Tulsa area.
So, there was snow that fell, but you couldn’t tell if anything ever happened if you were to look outside right now. Whatever snow fell either melted or blew away before sticking, at least where I am.
Other places did get some measurable snow today. Storm reports from the National Weather Service Tulsa office said an inch of snow was recorded in Cherokee County near Eldon, 0.5 inches at spots near Watts in Adair County, near Tahlequah and in Drumright in Creek County.
This is nothing to write home about, so I’m going to stop. We’ll talk when we get some actual snow. I’m tired of all these teasers.
But the Christmas Day system that coated southeast Oklahoma and much of Arkansas brought tornadoes to a wide swath of the Gulf Coast states. There were 51 preliminary reports of tornadoes in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and 99 wind damage reports.
I snapped this photo from my phone about 2 p.m. on Christmas Day. It shows blizzard warnings for northeast Arkansas only a few hundred miles from tornado warnings in Mississippi and Louisiana. That’s a very rare sight, my friends.
Here is a video taken from a Mobile, Ala., Walgreens that was near the path of a tornado. You can see the cars just tossed around like they are unwanted toys the day after Christmas.
It was a wild weather day on Christmas except for here.
Now we look forward to the
next system, which will approach the area early next week. It looks like it will be mainly a rain event in Tulsa, but there are chances for freezing precipitation either in the form of snow or sleet. Accumulations won’t be much, however.
And after that passed, the drought continues. That
stupid, stubborn drought will continue to be weather problem number 1 in 2013, at least at the beginning of the year. Because it will take more than some light snow and a day of rain to make any difference at all.
--Jerry Wofford
