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Light Snow, Gusty Winds Hit High Country Wednesday Evening, Grandfather Mountain Gusts North of 90 mph

Source: National Weather Service
Source: National Weather Service

By Jesse Wood

March 13, 2014. The High Country received just enough snow last night to remind us that winter isn’t over yet, and, oh, the wind was sure howling. 

According to RaysWeather.com “Almanac” for snow totals this year, Beech Mountain saw one inch of snow in the past 24 hours to bring the 2013-14 winter total to 65.2 inches.

Boone also saw one inch of snow to bring its total for the winter season to 29.8 inches of snow, while Sugar Mountain saw two inches of snow to bring its total for the season to 76.5 inches.

But the bigger story of the evening was the wind!

Preliminary figures compiled by the State Climate Office, show that Grandfather Mountain had gusts north of 90 mph at 10 p.m. Wednesday evening and wind speed of 60 mph. That is the latest time that weather data has been posted as of yet. 

The National Weather Service had issued a wind advisory yesterday for the region, and this morning it published a list of “some of the higher wind gusts” during the previous 24 hours.

Jefferson in Ashe County was the highest listed on this particular graphic with a wind gust of 60 mph. Other local areas on the list included Boone at 58 mph and Foscoe at 50 mph.

The wind chill was also brutal at well this morning with 1 degrees registering in Boone and similar figures from surrounding areas, according to a separate graphic from the National Weather Service.  

One bright spot was the lack of power outages. While swaths of outages were reported across the National Weather Service’s Blacksburg, Va., office’s region, very few outages were reported across the High Country. 

Watauga County woke up to snow this morning. Pictures of Winklers Creek. Photos by Ken Ketchie
Watauga County woke up to snow this morning. Two of the pictures of Winklers Creek Road. Photos by Ken Ketchie

 

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Thursday morning wind chill - Source: National Weather Service
Thursday morning wind chill – Source: National Weather Service