A Texan’s Guide to Measuring Snowfall – Six Easy Steps

If you're living along the Upper Texas Coast, what were you doing about six months ago? You were probably watching and wondering what Hurricane Beryl was going to do. We later found out that the storm would knock out power for a large portion of the Houston, Texas Metro.

There's another threat to the power grid that serves Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange this morning. That threat is almost the direct opposite of a tropical weather system. We are staring down the barrel of a major winter storm. 

The National Weather Service Forecast Offices in Houston/Galveston, Texas, Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Baton Rouge/New Orleans, Louisiana have been very busy over the past week preparing us for extreme cold and the potential for wintry precipitation. It looks as if those preparations will come into play later today, tonight, and Tuesday.

And while a lot of us are familiar with the concept of "cold temperatures" it's very seldom in our part of the world that we get warnings for "extreme" and "dangerous" cold temperatures. I think the cold temperatures will affect more people in Louisiana over the next few days than any accumulation of frozen precipitation will.

Unless frozen precipitation causes problems along the power grid, which is likely to happen, trees could break in areas where they become weighted down with snow and ice accumulations. Often, when these limbs break, they bring down powerlines with them. And with road conditions not the greatest, it might take repair crews an even longer time to reach the problem area and restore service.

But how much snow and ice does it take for service interruptions to occur? The short answer is "not much," especially if the frozen precipitation accumulating is ice in the form of sleet or freezing rain. Those conditions add additional weight to tree limbs and the powerlines themselves.

Meanwhile, as conditions begin to deteriorate and the snow begins to fall across the Gulf South you are going to be treated to a wonderful selection of photographs featuring people's patio furniture. It's the best place to show snow accumulation for most of us but if you were going to measure how much snow fell on your patio furniture, there is a specific way to go about doing that.

If you follow these steps, you can submit your snow report to your nearest National Weather Service Forecast Office.