For the second time this week, a long tailing storm will coat the central United States with snow and ice from Texas to the Great Lakes, over a 1,500-mile-long swath. The wintry mix, which was beginning to fall in the Lone Star State on Wednesday and was causing long backups on the roadways by Wednesday night, will be extensive enough in this one storm to deliver an entire year's worth of snow, just in time to close out 2020.
This second round of the wintry storm is unfolding much farther south than the first, with portions of northern Mexico and southwestern Texas forecast to experience a significant accumulation.
"Places such as San Angelo, Texas, only pick up 2-3 inches of snow per year, on average, but this storm can deliver that amount and much, much more all in one shot," according to AccuWeather Senior Storm Warning Meteorologist Eddie Walker.
The first part of the double-barreled storm hit areas from Colorado and Kansas to Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois hard prior to Wednesday with snow that rapidly covered roads and made for low visibility in snow that piled up at the rate of 1-2 inches per hour for a time. The first part of the storm concluded over Michigan with rain, spotty ice and snow on Wednesday.
Des Moines, Iowa, set a new daily record snowfall on Dec. 29 with 9.6 inches falling. The old record for the date was 2 inches set more than 100 years ago in 1907. The fast-hitting nature of the the snow made roads an icy mess and resulted in many spin outs and accidents in the Quad Cities area of Illinois and Iowa during Tuesday evening. In Chicago, the 2.6 inches of snow that fell at O'Hare Airport was the biggest single snowfall of the winter so far and has pushed the seasonal total to 3.5 inches.
