Make Your Own Snow

Dalhart Weather Review

by Aaron Graves

Freezing fog left a heavy layer of frost on the trees.

Have you ever wanted to create your own snow storm? It’s easy. All you need is a cold day, an inversion, and several large factories. While Dalhart residents dealt with cold temperatures and freezing fog, THE weather story of the week took place Monday morning near Borger, with what is being called “factory effect snow.”

It is an extremely rare phenomenon in which the steam produced by a large factory adds enough moisture to the air to form snow. The Amarillo office of the National Weather Service posted a special slide program explaining this, as it does not happen every day. First, the air has to be cold and saturated in the lower levels. Second, the factory steam has to rise and basically become trapped in the correct area of the atmosphere. This is due to an inversion, which is a layer of warmer air in the atmosphere that acts as a cap and prevents the steam from escaping. 

If all conditions are right, snowflakes form, and the wind blows the snow downstream from the factory.  Not only is this a rare thing, but the amount of snow it produced was equally so - up to 3” of snow in narrow bands near Borger. 

Dalhart did not see any snow or ice from the latest cold snap, but freezing fog Sunday and Monday painted tree limbs and fence posts white with frost. This was preceded by a very pleasant weekend, with the high on Saturday reaching 66 degrees. 

Last week’s snow finally totaled 2.8” after three days (Feb. 4, 5 and 6), which was the equivalent of 0.08” of moisture. We shivered our way through overnight lows that fell as low as 4 degrees on Feb 6. 

Warmer weather is in store for the rest of the week. The high today is expected to be in the mid 50s, and we could see the mid 70s by Saturday. Partly cloudy skies will be the norm, and no rain is in the forecast. 

January 2014 ended with an average high of 50.9 degrees and an average low of 19.8 degrees. We received 3” of very dry snow throughout the month. It contained only 0.01” of moisture. 

High and low temps the past two weeks

Jan 28: 35, 11

Jan 29: 51, 18

Jan 30: 55, 34

Jan 31: 38, 22

Feb 1: 37, 18

Feb 2: 35, 18

Feb 3: 51, 26

Feb 4: 33, 15

Feb 5: 15, 5

Feb 6: 17, 4

Feb 7: 55, 11

Feb 8: 66, 25

Feb 9: 44, 20

Feb 10: 22, 18