‘Killing freeze’ in Wichita weather forecast after snow and cold break NWS records

Meteorologists predict “a widespread killing freeze” across much of Kansas after snow and cold temperatures broke records in Wichita.

The National Weather Service office in Wichita issued a winter weather advisory running through 1 a.m. Tuesday for portions of central, south-central and southeast Kansas. The forecast calls for light snow, sleet and freezing rain. Snow and sleet accumulations will be less an an inch and ice accumulations will be less than one-tenth of an inch.

“Plan on slippery road conditions,” the advisory states. “The hazardous conditions will impact the morning and evening commutes.”

The city did not pre-treat the roads with brine Sunday evening in advance of the storm because of rain. Now, Wichita’s snowplow drivers plan to keep all the city’s trucks running on 12-hour shifts through Wednesday afternoon, when the precipitation is expected to transition back to rain.

“We did activate our full response as of midnight,” Ben Nelson, a city public works administrator, said Monday morning. “Once our crews got on scene, we deployed all 60 of our trucks and began to apply the salt and the sand mix across all 1,500 lane miles of arterial (roads) and the 300 lane miles of our secondary and school routes.”

The snowfall was greater than city crews expected, which meant they needed to use the plows on the front of the dump trucks to clear the roads.

“A lot of times we try not to put the plows down if we don’t have to, for two reasons,” Nelson said. “No. 1, it slows the trucks down significantly. We can make it through the whole system in about 8 hours without the plows down, with the plows down they have to go slower, and it can take two to three times as long to make it through. The second thing is it can move some of that salt and sand and remove it from the roadway.”

The National Weather Service measured 1.3 inches of snow as of 10:50 a.m. Monday, breaking the old Oct. 26 record of 0.5 inches set in 1913. It also set another record for “the most snow Wichita has ever received this early in the season,” NWS Wichita reported in a tweet.

Little to no additional accumulation was expected after that measurement as precipitation transitioned to light freezing drizzle with some flurries, the weather service said. The forecast had called for as much as 2 inches of snow in the city.

Monday morning’s low temperature of 24 degrees broke the Wichita record for coldest low temperature. The previous mark was 25 degrees, set in 1957.

The Oct. 26 record for coolest high is 32 degrees, which was also set in 1957. That mark was expected to be broken Monday afternoon, which had a forecasted high of 28 degrees, but it was not officially broken prior to publication.

The NWS Wichita hazardous weather outlook predicts “a widespread killing freeze” Monday night. It will be followed by a wintry mix of precipitation across much of the area on Tuesday, continuing into early Wednesday morning. Additional snow and ice accumulations are possible with the storm before it transitions to rain Wednesday afternoon and Thursday. Locally-heavy rainfall could lead to minor lowland flooding.

Any measurable snowfall on Tuesday in Wichita would set a record, as the weather service has never recorded snow accumulations on Oct. 27. The record low temperature of 23 degrees, set in 1957, and the coolest high of 37 degrees, set in 1911, are both in jeopardy.

This story was originally published October 26, 2020 at 3:09 PM.