Snowstorm worst since 2003

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February 4, 2010

By Carol Mills The Sentinel-Echo Thu Feb 04, 2010, 11:35 AM EST

By Carol Mills

staff writer

Snow began falling Friday afternoon and by 7 p.m. Saturday evening, 6 to 7 inches had fallen in Laurel County, according to Matt Belcher, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson.

Belcher said that was the most snow to hit Laurel County since January 2003, when 6.2 inches was recorded Jan. 17. There is some missing data, but as far as he could tell, Jan. 17 was the last deep snowfall.

The weather began warming up Monday and that trend will continue until Thursday. Today’s high is predicted to be 42 with a low of 24 and Thursday’s high will be 44 with a low of 30.

Since the warming up process will take a few days, Belcher said there should not be wide-spread flooding.

“Six inches of snow doesn’t usually melt that fast,” he said. “If we were to receive 2 inches of rain like we saw Sunday before last on top of this snow, then we could potentially be looking at some problems.”

There may be a chance of some precipitation this weekend.

“We are watching a system pretty closely right now that looks to be going through the area as early as Thursday night,” Belcher said. “It could keep chances of precipitation around through the Saturday night-Sunday morning time. Depending on temperatures, it’s going to snow or rain or both. It looks like there is a chance it could start out as rain, could change over to snow at some point. Timing is an issue with this one. If everything comes together just right, we could see some rain on Friday night, some snow on Saturday, possibly finishing off with a little rain on Saturday night and Sunday.”

With the forecasters predicting snow to fall earlier than it did on Friday, the Laurel County and East Bernstadt school systems played it safe and let students stay home.

The back roads were still unsafe for travel Monday and Tuesday and school was canceled again. The students had already used up all their allotted days except one during the storm before Christmas. That day, plus the three missed days because of this storm, made a total of four. The school systems are waiting to hear from the legislature to see if they will allow any more school days before deciding on how to make up those days.

Staff writer Carol Mills can be reached at cmills@sentinel-echo.com.

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