A file photo of a snowplow clearing a road in Cache Valley.
LOGAN – Talk about a weather nightmare. Wednesday morning Cache County got slammed with snow much to everyone’s surprise.
While people were just getting out of bed, they probably had no idea the amount of snow had fallen and what awaited them during the morning hours.
Some people stayed home from work because they could shovel the heavy snow or they were trying to get their neighbors shoveled out.
Even the National Weather Service got it wrong.
The NWS forecasted the valley would have patchy fog in the morning and snow then rain and snow likely in the afternoon. They predicted accumulations of 1 inch with highs around 40 and an 80 percent chance of precipitation.
KVNU’s Will Feelwright, program director and reporter for KVNU news, said when he got to work at 5 a.m. there was radio traffic wondering why the plows weren’t out on the roads and highways.
He said he thought they had over a foot at the radio station, but when he checked the gauge, he thought some had settled and it said they may not have had that much.
“I know we had over 9 inches,” Feelwright said. “Beaver Mountain Ski Resort recorded 10 inches of snow and at Cherry Peak Ski Resort said they got 12 inches of snow in 24 hours.”
He said as the day went on the resorts probably got more.
In a social media post Wednesday afternoon, the Cache County School District admitted they made a mistake in not having a delayed start for students going to school.
“Today we made the wrong call. Based on the conditions, we should have at least had a late start. The safety of our students and staff is very important to us and we will be doing a thorough review of our process to determine how we can continue to improve,” the Facebook post said.
The school district reported in an earlier post that the district covers a large geographical area, weather and road conditions vary from place to place.
“During adverse weather conditions, we encourage parents to make attendance decisions for their children based on their specific ability to get to school safely,” the statement said. “Tardies or absences will not count against students.”
As of Tuesday, February 20, Cache Valley was 117 percent of normal snow water equivalent for this time of year. Today surely changed that.
The NWS predicted tonight there will be a chance of rain and snow in the evening, then a slight chance of rain and snow after midnight. Patchy fog after midnight. Mostly cloudy. Lows around 30. Chance of precipitation 30 percent.
We shall see.