Bitter cold grips central US with snow and ice

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reports from Hays, Kansas, where frigid conditions and AccuWeather RealFeel&reg; temperatures dipped to as low as minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit early this morning on Feb. 18.

Transcript

00:00Look at that high temperature in Wichita, Kansas today. Four. And Kansas, boy, what a day.

00:07What a day they're going to have. Yep, and that's where we-

00:10That's where we, go ahead. Tony Loback, the central plains are getting

00:15hammered with the latest winter storm. Yeah, it's more about the wind. It's more about the cold.

00:21And we're going to call them Nanook of the North there.

00:23I love it. Or the Nanook of Kansas,

00:26where we see less and less of Tony right now, just a little bit of his eyes.

00:31The snow's picked up a little bit here as well, Tony.

00:36Yeah, Bernie, that actually has been the biggest change here over the last, I'd say,

00:4060 to 90 minutes is we've kind of got a band of snow that's developed just to the south,

00:45and that's kind of spread its way in. You get a little bit further south toward the Dodge City,

00:50the Kinsley areas, that's about an hour or so south of here. Snowing pretty good down that

00:55way. They've reported visibility less than a quarter mile in this. But you notice you can

00:59see the snow, but these aren't like huge flakes. We've been talking about just how cold it is out

01:04here. Those AccuWeather Riofields, 30 below, even worse than that at times. There's just not a lot

01:09of moisture, so you get these really small flakes, which just add to the misery that is today.

01:14We talked about it last hour. You guys asked if I had volunteered for this, and of course I do.

01:18While this is not like the greatest thing in the world to get up and go do, you know I'm not a

01:23morning person, so the last thing I want to do is get up at five o'clock in the morning, come out

01:26in here and stand out here and tell you how cold it is, I still prefer this over extreme heat any

01:32day of the week. So I might be the only one, but that's just about it. But yes, the snow, that's

01:37going to be one of the factors in this equation that we're dealing with here in the Central Plains.

01:41Off and on, it's going to be like this, kind of banded snow, probably over the next, I'd say,

01:45six to eight hours before the bulk of this system continues to work its way off to the south and

01:50east. That's where the really heavy snow and the ice is going to be a big concern. Here it's going

01:54to be the cold, the wind. We might add another couple of inches of snow here in Hays. We're

01:59currently sitting right about two. That's the report I went ahead and made at about eight

02:03o'clock this morning. I'm going to call it about two. It's about an average depending on where you

02:07go. There are drifts that are about a foot deep in some places, and then there are areas where the

02:12wind has just scoured the snow out completely. So two inches is probably a pretty safe bet here in

02:16Hays. You get a little further south, like we talked about that band that's hitting right now.

02:20We had one overnight that dropped about four or five inches, areas from Great Bend down to Kinsley.

02:25So not too far south of here, we definitely saw some of that heavier snow overnight. And again,

02:30it's blowing around quite a bit, which will make travel a little bit on the hazardous side. We're

02:35not expecting widespread closures or any huge traffic concerns. It's going to be the blowing

02:40snow and the visibility that are going to be the big issues. So if you have to be out on the roads,

02:45make sure you've got some extra clothes, blankets, things in your car, just in case you find yourself

02:50getting stranded. Again, we're not looking at widespread snow issues here in Kansas. I-70,

02:56get a little further southeast possibly, but it's that cold. You don't want to be exposed

03:00to that cold. So again, if you don't have to travel, if you don't have to be out today,

03:04it's best to do that because when you're talking about AccuWeather Real Feels 30 below, 20 below,

03:10you're exposing yourself to hypothermia and frostbite within minutes. That's why you see

03:14me bundled from head to toe, or I guess don't see me because all you see is my eyes. Because

03:19anything exposed, it hurts. Like even just like undoing the camera and everything, sometimes you

03:24have to do it without gloves. Just in the two or three minutes it takes to do that, it is painfully

03:29cold out here. That is the good way to put it. So here in Kansas, again, two inches of snow and

03:34haze. Worse further southeast, Wichita, four degrees. You're going to be warmer than we're

03:38going to be up here in haze, that's for sure. So definitely going to be a nasty couple of days,

03:43this extreme cold warning goes until Thursday before we start to, if you want to call it,

03:49warm things up a bit. Believe it or not, Bernie, Ari, my house in northern Colorado is going to

03:54be warmer by 20 or 30 degrees than it is going to be here. So missing home a little bit, but

04:00certainly could be worse.

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