The Official Kansas City Weather Thread

[shinatoo]

I've got a four foot drift across my front yard that looks like a big wave ready to crash into my house.

[Highlander]

How much snow?  I was planning on coming up tomorrow (Dec 26) from Tulsa.  May delay it a day if road conditions are too poor.  

[warwickland]

Anyone else snowed in?

No snow on the ground at all here on the east side of the state. Kind of sucks, really.

[DaveKCMO]

How much snow?  I was planning on coming up tomorrow (Dec 26) from Tulsa.  May delay it a day if road conditions are too poor.  

definitely check in with KDOT. i'm in coffeyville and the conditions last night were very poor. it's calm today, so if the roads have been cleared you'll probably be fine.

[mean]

The parts of the city I've been in today are all freaking nasty. The plowing helps for a while, then the snow just blows right back onto the road and gets turned into goop by drivers. The highways are OK, but the surface streets are pretty sad. Not necessarily super deadly, but SERIOUSLY caution-inducing.

[FangKC]

Stop the snow already. First big snowstorm in my new house. I could hardly push open the front storm door to get out yesterday. I have learned that the snow drifts up against the house and right over the sidewalk that leads to my front door.

To get to my front door, one has to go down steps from the driveway, and then up more steps to my front deck. That space (in between the two sets of stairs) is a trough where snow drifts three times as high as in the yard. I had to dig what amounts to a tunnel to clear a path for the mail delivery person.

I'm now regretting the lack of foresight to father child minions to do this work for me. The driveway has been easier. I've been driving my car back and forth over the driveway dozens of times to pack down the snow.

[LaurenKU]

definitely check in with KDOT. i'm in coffeyville and the conditions last night were very poor. it's calm today, so if the roads have been cleared you'll probably be fine.

Coffeyville???  Me too.  Driving home from Mass on Christmas Eve was pretty scary...impossible to see.

Drove back to KC yesterday, and the highways weren't terrible, but the streets in town were pretty bad.  Haven't left the house at all today, though - and we've gotten quite a bit of snow since I've been home.

[aknowledgeableperson]

The road conditions reminds me of the time before cities actually plowed the streets.

[mudjack]

The road conditions reminds me of the time before cities actually plowed the streets.

Our street has been plowed once in the three years we have lived here, but it isn't a major street.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Traveled more of the streets today.  And they truly brought back some old memories.

Way back when (don't forget I had to walk to school and home in this stuff, uphill both ways) when the streets were covered with snow the plows did not go curb to curb.  So main streets like SW Trafficway and The  Paseo had only two lanes of traffic instead of three during rush hour and then were down to one lane after rush hour traffic when cars parked along them.  Of course residential streets were not plowed, at least until the early 80's and then if the snowfall exceeded 4 or 5 inches and then they just got one pass down the middle after the snow stopped.

Really, I did walk to school and home but it was only five blocks.  Sometimes a neighbor would drive the neighborhood kids to school along with his but most of the time we were on our own.

[mean]

This has easily been the most obnoxious snowstorm of my adult life. There have been nastier ice storms, felling trees and knocking out power and so on, but in terms of snow I think this wins.

[DaveKCMO]

ha ha... came back to KC sunday night and WHERE IS THE SNOW? i mean, it's piled high to the sides but the major roads seem clear. my hometown (which is only 7 sq mi) was still littered with massive ruts in the snow/ice pack on side streets when i left. i was also in tulsa, which had about the same street conditions as KC on sunday (and they rarely see any snow accumulation, but still managed to survive).

trust me, KC, you have little left to complain about today (unless you are a pedestrian, of course). all but the most incompetent drivers will have problems going forward.

[dangerboy]

Sunday the City made a major effort to clear the arterials curb-to-curb in advance of Monday's rush hour.  Hopefully with the arterials finally clear they start on the side streets today.  The few times a ventured out over the weekend I could definitely empathize with the snowplow drivers. Southwest Trafficway kept alternating between two and four lanes as the winds blew snow onto the road as soon as they could clear it.

[grovester]

yeah, the problem was less the amount of snow, but more that it snowed continually for 48-72 hours with serious wind.

[LaurenKU]

This picture was taken on Sunday...

[cityscape]

Simply hilarious.  I wonder which side is Kansas and which is Missouri. 

[dangerboy]

This picture was taken on Sunday...

Looks like it is a view west into Mission Hills, which is not really a fair comparison with a city that uses diamond-plated snow plows.

[droopy]

Looks like it is a view west into Mission Hills, which is not really a fair comparison with a city that uses diamond-plated snow plows.

I think you're right that it is Mission Hills, however, you could take the same picture today and it would look the same.  I can't make out the sign exact cross street, but it looks to be in the 70s.  I live very near here and drive these streets, they were still the same this morning.  It's dangerous turning onto Ward Pkwy or State Line from a side street that has 6 inches of slippery slop.

[GRID]

That's so misleading.  That's a major road in a very small suburb that has nothing better to do than plow the streets across from what would be a tiny residential street in a city of half million people with over 300 square miles and hundreds of miles, if not thousands of miles of primary and secondary roads that need to be addressed first.

It is photos like this that fuel the fire of how much "better" Kansas is than Missouri, yet having lived in the Brookside/Waldo area many years, I can remember many times when the freeways and arterials were in much better shape on the MO side vs the KS side.

I have never seen a major city that plowed small residential streets down to such cleanliness a couple days after a major snow storm.  It just doesn't happen.  It takes a while.

But again, KS side residents will walk around town with chins high knowing they live in a state where snow plowing is the top priority and is accomplished at such a high rate of satisfaction that it's probably the driving force causing the continuing massive migration of the corporate structure of KCMO into Kansas.  It's the plowing I tell you.  Not the STAR bonds or the tax breaks, it's the plowing.  It's just done better in Kansas!

It should be on the license plate of every KS vehicle.  A snow plow, right next to the jayhawk!  And the slogan of KS should be "We plow better than you think" which makes about as much sense as their current slogan.

Now, instead of building light rail, the residents of KCMO will demand that the city do more to be more like Mission Hills and will even elect a mayor that promises to do such a thing rather than build an urban city.

Well they got the mayor, but now they don't have light rail or 72nd terrace plowed to the asphalt days after a blizzard.  Oh well

That's my daily rant!

[warwickland]

Come on now Grid, look, theres not even any houses or trees on the Missouri side of the state line, must be all the blight and fires!