AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reports from Hays, Kansas, where frigid conditions and AccuWeather RealFeelĀ® temperatures dipped to as low as minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit early this morning on Feb. 18.
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00:00Look at that high temperature in Wichita, Kansas today. Four. And Kansas, boy, what a day.
00:07What a day they're going to have. Yep, and that's where we-
00:10That's where we, go ahead. Tony Loback, the central plains are getting
00:15hammered with the latest winter storm. Yeah, it's more about the wind. It's more about the cold.
00:21And we're going to call them Nanook of the North there.
00:23I love it. Or the Nanook of Kansas,
00:26where we see less and less of Tony right now, just a little bit of his eyes.
00:31The snow's picked up a little bit here as well, Tony.
00:36Yeah, Bernie, that actually has been the biggest change here over the last, I'd say,
00:4060 to 90 minutes is we've kind of got a band of snow that's developed just to the south,
00:45and that's kind of spread its way in. You get a little bit further south toward the Dodge City,
00:50the Kinsley areas, that's about an hour or so south of here. Snowing pretty good down that
00:55way. They've reported visibility less than a quarter mile in this. But you notice you can
00:59see the snow, but these aren't like huge flakes. We've been talking about just how cold it is out
01:04here. Those AccuWeather Riofields, 30 below, even worse than that at times. There's just not a lot
01:09of moisture, so you get these really small flakes, which just add to the misery that is today.
01:14We talked about it last hour. You guys asked if I had volunteered for this, and of course I do.
01:18While this is not like the greatest thing in the world to get up and go do, you know I'm not a
01:23morning person, so the last thing I want to do is get up at five o'clock in the morning, come out
01:26in here and stand out here and tell you how cold it is, I still prefer this over extreme heat any
01:32day of the week. So I might be the only one, but that's just about it. But yes, the snow, that's
01:37going to be one of the factors in this equation that we're dealing with here in the Central Plains.
01:41Off and on, it's going to be like this, kind of banded snow, probably over the next, I'd say,
01:45six to eight hours before the bulk of this system continues to work its way off to the south and
01:50east. That's where the really heavy snow and the ice is going to be a big concern. Here it's going
01:54to be the cold, the wind. We might add another couple of inches of snow here in Hays. We're
01:59currently sitting right about two. That's the report I went ahead and made at about eight
02:03o'clock this morning. I'm going to call it about two. It's about an average depending on where you
02:07go. There are drifts that are about a foot deep in some places, and then there are areas where the
02:12wind has just scoured the snow out completely. So two inches is probably a pretty safe bet here in
02:16Hays. You get a little further south, like we talked about that band that's hitting right now.
02:20We had one overnight that dropped about four or five inches, areas from Great Bend down to Kinsley.
02:25So not too far south of here, we definitely saw some of that heavier snow overnight. And again,
02:30it's blowing around quite a bit, which will make travel a little bit on the hazardous side. We're
02:35not expecting widespread closures or any huge traffic concerns. It's going to be the blowing
02:40snow and the visibility that are going to be the big issues. So if you have to be out on the roads,
02:45make sure you've got some extra clothes, blankets, things in your car, just in case you find yourself
02:50getting stranded. Again, we're not looking at widespread snow issues here in Kansas. I-70,
02:56get a little further southeast possibly, but it's that cold. You don't want to be exposed
03:00to that cold. So again, if you don't have to travel, if you don't have to be out today,
03:04it's best to do that because when you're talking about AccuWeather Real Feels 30 below, 20 below,
03:10you're exposing yourself to hypothermia and frostbite within minutes. That's why you see
03:14me bundled from head to toe, or I guess don't see me because all you see is my eyes. Because
03:19anything exposed, it hurts. Like even just like undoing the camera and everything, sometimes you
03:24have to do it without gloves. Just in the two or three minutes it takes to do that, it is painfully
03:29cold out here. That is the good way to put it. So here in Kansas, again, two inches of snow and
03:34haze. Worse further southeast, Wichita, four degrees. You're going to be warmer than we're
03:38going to be up here in haze, that's for sure. So definitely going to be a nasty couple of days,
03:43this extreme cold warning goes until Thursday before we start to, if you want to call it,
03:49warm things up a bit. Believe it or not, Bernie, Ari, my house in northern Colorado is going to
03:54be warmer by 20 or 30 degrees than it is going to be here. So missing home a little bit, but
04:00certainly could be worse.