April 16th-A snowy scene not typically seen in Western Wisconsin this time of year

Some people may remember by Drifts to Daffodils post in February, well now we’ve done to opposite! If I posted the picture above in December, most people would likely have trouble believe it was actually taken in mid April! A strong low pressure system first brought very windy conditions to the area Friday, then brought all snow on Friday night into Saturday without any rain at all, most places seen around a half inch to and inch, but some areas were dumped on by more then 4 inches of snow, Reminding everyone of the extra long winter that we just gone through, and making everyone forget the near 80.F degree temperatures 6 days ago! I know I remember I have already begun early spring planting shrubs in one of my front gardens. Snowfall reports can be found at the bottom of this post.

Snowy Daffodils April 16th

I’ve got to say when I first woke up and saw how much snow we had gotten it made me wonder if the Spring we had was a dream and I had to look at the calender to remind me it was April. I measured 3.0″ inches of new snow at my location while I was looking how sad My daffodils looked this morning in the image above. I found them drooping, snowcover in partly frozen. It has me wondering if they will be able to pull through this one, as I’ve never had this much snow when Daffodils in parts of my yard were in full bloom.

Here is a look how the main garden Daffodils and Tulips are doing, they were luckily not blooming, so the snow and cold will have a hard time harming these hardy flowers!

An all to familiar front yard scene April 16th 2011

One more look at a view that reminded me of what I’ve been looking at for the last 6 months! This snow even had a wintry-like feel to it because the temperature was below 32.F most of the time it was falling.

Small tree down near Lake Magnor near Clayton,WI April 15th

Another thing worth mentioned is the strong Northeast winds that arose from this system on Friday. The same very strong low pressure system that brought us the snow also brought the area very strong winds. winds were sustained over 25MPH at times, and it brought my 3rd highest wind gust ever recorded my station reported a gust of 42MPH around 3PM. The winds did cause issues and even downed some weakened trees around my area.

Large tree down 1 mile south of Clayton April 15th

This tree that fell while I was at my aunts was actually fairly large, at least a foot in diameter at the bottom. My guess was for the reason this fell is that the saturated ground weakened the root system and it fell, crushing a farmers barbed wire fence.

The highest reports was an almost gut wrenching 4.50″ in River Falls there seemed to be a fairly narrow corridor of higher reports in the central and southwest parts of the area. The least snow reported overall was seen in southern Dunn county.