As bad weather continued through the Great Plains on Thursday, people in a town in southwest Texas said Wednesday that the temperature dropped a lot and there was so much ice that they had to use snow plows to clear the streets.
A scientist for the National Weather Service Midland, Texas, Brian Curran told ABC News that the temperature dropped more than 50 degrees in Marathon, Texas, on Wednesday afternoon. In just one hour, the temperature dropped from about 105 degrees to the mid-50s.
Curran said that the crazy drop in temperature was because of the hailstorm that hit Marathon.
He said, “It was like an air conditioner.”
Chief of the Marathon Fire Department Brad Wilson told ABC News that it felt like summer turned into winter in an hour.
“Our main street in the middle of town had about two feet of hail.” W e said, “It looked like snow.” “We went out there with a tape measure last night before the road crews came and plowed the roads.”
Wilson said that it rained about 2 1/2 inches in an hour in the town on Thursday as well.
He said, “It was interesting.”
In the warm months, hail is more likely to happen. As the day gets hotter, thunderstorms happen. The updraft in the thunderstorms moves very cold drops to the top of the cloud, where they stay. The hail moves around in the cloud until it’s too heavy to hold on to and falls to the ground.
Curran said that big changes in weather like the one in Marathon happen all the time in Texas and can get even worse.
The National Weather Service says that in February 2022, Austin’s temperature dropped from 88 degrees to 32 degrees in just 24 hours. This was the largest temperature change ever recorded in the Texas city.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that the biggest change in temperature ever seen in the United States happened in Loma, Montana, on January 14 and 15. There, the temperature rose 103 degrees in 24 hours.
Police in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas say that severe weather over the Memorial Day weekend killed at least 20 people in those states.
Over the holiday weekend, at least 25 storms were reported in five states, according to the government.
Many people were hurt and seven people died in Valley View, Texas, which is about 60 miles northwest of Dallas. The area was hit by severe weather, including several tornadoes, on Saturday night, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared 106 counties to be in disaster.
Abbott said that across the state, more than 200 homes and other buildings were destroyed and another 120 were injured.
Storms this week also cut power to more than 600,000 people in Texas who get their power from Oncor, the state’s biggest power company. Oncor said Thursday afternoon that it had fixed the power for more than 480,000 users.
Most of Texas and southeast Colorado will have bad weather and heavy rain on Thursday afternoon.
Large hail, damaging winds, and a few tornadoes are most likely to hit towns in Texas from Lubbock to Abilene and San Angelo on Thursday afternoon and evening.
On Thursday, there were several flash flood warnings in New Orleans and north of Dallas.
The danger of bad weather moves a little east on Friday, affecting most of central and southeastern Texas as well as the Lower Mississippi Valley.
