at 8:20 PM by Pierce Larkin

WxOrNot Weather Events Of The Year

Well, the past year has been a doozy. We have had hot weather, rainy weather, dry weather, lots of snow, etc. It was really wild, especially at the beginning of the year. The latter portion….well, was boring and rainy. Because of this, I have chosen 8 events from this year that were the craziest overall. At the end, I’ll put a Twitter poll in, and you all can vote on the craziest of the year!

Presidents Day Winter Storm

Overall, one of the more impactful winter storms in the past 20 years. We saw a low pressure system roll to our south, and with favorable atmospheric dynamics associated with the low, and a very cold airmass in place, the stage was set for a big storm.

h/t NWS Jackson
h/t NWS Jackson

It snowed, and snowed, and snowed. WKU was out an entire week, several other Universities let school out. It essentially shut the state down from I-64 and south. Then, it got really cold.

March 3-5 Flooding/Winter Storm

This was likely the craziest storm of the year. In fact, I think this was the most impactful winter storm since the 2009 ice storm, and maybe before that. The combination of a long duration heavy rainfall event, and then a bonkers amount of snow right after, created one of the more impactful storm systems in recent memory.

h/t NWS Jackson
h/t NWS Jackson
h/t NWS Louisville
h/t NWS Louisville

This storm produced a wide swath of 2-4″ rainfall totals, and then many of those same areas saw 12-24″ of snowfall on top of it. This caused substantial traffic issues, as I-65 and I-24 had hundreds of cars stuck on each overnight and into the next day. I-65 northbound was shut down through the night, and wouldn’t reopen until the next day.

February Subzero Temps

In the days following the President’s day storm, we had additional snowfall, and clear skies as a very, very cold high pressure system settled into the region. This allowed radiational cooling to take effect, and it got cold.

h/t NWS Jackson
h/t NWS Jackson

Temps approached all-time record lows, and we saw dangerously cold temps.

February 22nd Craziness

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This week was just absurd. The vast difference in meteorology between the initial part of the week, and the Saturday that the 22nd fell on was insane. A new low pressure system moved into the region, and slammed the area with heavy rainfall. Even though totals were up to 3″ of rain, flooding wasn’t a huge issue. The dry nature of the snowfall absorbed much of the rain, and helped alleviate that worry.

January 23 Snowstorm

h/t NWS Louisville
h/t NWS Louisville

This was one of the bigger surprises of the winter, overall. Rain was forecasted to change over to snow late in the day across the region, but it changed over much more rapidly than previously anticipated. This lead to heavy snowfall rates along the Bluegrass/Western KY Parkways, and surprised many.

April 2nd Central KY Flash Flood

This was such a ridiculous event. A boundary set up along the I-64 corridor overnight, and focused a training line of thunderstorms to roll across areas of central Kentucky. This dropped copious amounts of rainfall across the area, with 4-7″ falling.

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There were water rescues across that area, and it lasted well into the next day.

April 26 Edmonson County Tornado

There was a severe weather event on April 25th this year, and while it wasn’t too crazy, it did produce a strong tornado in Edmonson County. It was not a very long-lived tornado, but it did produce EF-2 damage over its short path.

  July Severe Weather And Rain   July was crazy. We started the month off with a lot of wind damage and a few tornadoes in Green County, KY. As the month continued on, it continued to rain, and several areas saw absurd totals.  

Johnson County in eastern KY saw a storm that had rainfall rates that were upwards of 6-7″ of rain per hour. This caused massive, and damaging flash flooding across that county. Overall, the month itself was pretty wild.

Vote for the craziest winter storm here: