Thankfully, it wasn’t a repeat of the blizzard of January 1978, when nearly 30 inches blanketed the Tri-State, but the region still got a big share of snowfall to mark the storm’s 48th anniversary.
After a nationwide winter storm blew through Jan. 24, the region’s workweek began Jan. 26 under roughly 10 inches of snow, with schools and many businesses closed and local and state crews working to clear roads amid bitter cold temperatures. Mayor Stephanie Terry and the Vanderburgh County Board of Commissioners issued a State of Emergency, effective through Feb. 1, following Indiana Gov. Mike Braun’s statewide declaration Jan. 24. President Donald Trump approved Indiana’s declaration that day.
Frigid conditions are expected to last through the week, with high temperatures in the 20s and lows plummeting to zero and even below. On the brighter side, the lack of ice kept power churning in most of the region, and officials say that, plus sunny skies, will aid in snow removal.
“If the road is visible, if they have it plowed down, the sun will help clear the roads today,” says Cliff Weaver, director of the Evansville-Vanderburgh County Emergency Management Authority. “… The roads are better than they were at this time last year with the ice storm. I expect clearing on the main routes. The neighborhood roads are going to be a challenge for a while, with the temperatures. That’s pretty much routine for this type of weather.”
“I’m just very glad we didn’t have power outages like the ice storm we had last year,” Weaver adds.
Indeed, CenterPoint Energy on Jan. 26 reported only one outage impacting multiple customers: a 35-customer issue in the Newburgh area, a far cry from last January’s ice storm when outages were widespread and lasted several days in some cases.
The weekend storm, however, did bring a plea Saturday from the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, electric grid operator for CenterPoint Indiana, for residents to curtail energy usage due to demands across MISO’s multi-state footprint. The request was crawled back about 24 hours later, but Noah Stubbs, a CenterPoint spokesman, says the call could be made again due to the ongoing bitter cold conditions. “MISO may issue additional alerts and CenterPoint will notify customers promptly,” he says.
With temperatures plummeting toward zero, warming centers were opened throughout the region. Organizations including United Caring Services and Evansville Rescue Mission remained open and offered meals and overnight shelter.
Businesses, including ones that residents rely on in adverse weather conditions, were impacted by the heavy snowfall. Schnucks grocery stores reopened Monday after being closed Sunday. Eastland Mall reopened at 11 a.m. Monday. Banks and some other businesses remained closed. Toyota’s plant in Princeton, Indiana, reported that supply chains were interrupted, affecting factory shifts on Jan. 26. Donut Bank, meanwhile, poked some fun at the weather, reporting in a Jan. 25 social media post that according to the “official DBI (Donut Bank Index), snow measurement as of 3:30pm is 5 Glazed Donuts, with isolated areas of up to 6+ Glazed Donuts.”
Despite recording 4.5 inches of snow Jan. 24 and a record-setting 8 inches Jan. 25, Evansville Regional Airport has remained open and operational. “While there have been some delays and cancellations, many flights have been operating throughout the winter weather storm this weekend, as our team has kept the main runway and taxiway open for operations. The airlines make those calls,” says Leslie Fella, director of marketing and air service at EVV. Airport officials advise travelers to stay connected with their airlines directly for flight status updates and allow extra time when traveling to and from the airport. In other transportation news, deliveries of concrete beams for the I-69 Ohio River Crossing project were canceled — and, with them, rolling stops to traffic — for Jan. 26.
Meanwhile, this iteration of Operation Snowflake has kept Evansville Area Jeepers busy. More than 400 rides to work were requested Jan. 25 by essential employees, with more than 50 volunteer drivers completing 394 rides. The demand continued into Jan. 26: Around 8 a.m., the club posted on its Facebook page that it had at least 200 requests already that morning, with 108 rides in the queue.
The winter storm has made this month the fifth snowiest January since records began in 1948, says WFIE-TV Chief Meteorologist Jeff Lyons. (Blizzards in 1977, ‘78, and ‘79 claim the top three spots, while 1996’s 13.5 inches of snow comes in fourth.) Although precipitation has passed by, residents still need to bundle up. The National Weather Service at Paducah, Kentucky, has issued an extreme cold warning for the Tri-State. “It looks like the cold will stick around into the weekend before we pop back to near 30 next week,” Lyons says, adding, “If we stay below freezing for 11 consecutive days, we’ll tie February 2021’s run of cold days.” Silver lining: Although Lyons calls it “brutally cold,” he notes that temperatures are “nowhere near the records” set in the 1960s, when temps dropped to as low as -18 on Jan. 28, 1963.
