US NWS North Platte, Nebraska

Snowfall Records Fall With First Snow Of The Season

A new snowfall record was set for the month of October, when 13.8 inches was observed at the National Weather Service Office at North Platte Regional Airport.  The old record occurred way back on October 29th and 30th 1896, when 13.0 inches was observed.  Snow depths of over a foot and a half were reported in and around the North Platte area.  Snow fell continuously from 8 pm CDT Friday evening until 10 am CDT Saturday morning. An unusually strong Arctic cold front ushered in temperatures from the upper teens to middle 20s by mid evening Friday.  As a strong Polar jet stream acted to bring persistent lift to the area Friday night, moderate snow fell continuously across the Nebraska Panhandle into west central and central Nebraska. Because the airmass was unusually cold, this caused the snow to be rather light and fluffy, thus the high snowfall totals. 

See this report to the southest out of Hastings, NE.  Here is a photo from that site.

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Early Austrian snow records set to be broken
By Lisa Chapman, Austrian Times

Austria’s provincial capitals are expected to see their earliest snowfalls in history today (Monday) as Arctic air sweeps the country.

Josef Haselhofer from Vienna’s Central Agency for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) said today (Monday) Arctic air would probably result in the first snow cover in provincial capitals before 20 October in history and said Innsbruck, Salzburg and St. Polten were likely to see snow.

He said as much as 30 to 40 centimetres of snow was likely down to 1,200 metres and snow could fall as low as 400 metres later this week, adding it had already begun to fall in Vorarlberg. He also predicted low temperatures would be minus five degrees at higher elevations and zero degrees in the lowlands by Thursday morning.

Haselhofer warned of possible impassable snow drifts in some places and the danger of avalanches in low-lying areas.

Car club OAMTC reported today that chains were mandatory for all vehicles on stretches of the Arlbergstrabe (L197), Lechtalstrabe (L198) and the Silvretta-Hochalpenstrabe (L188) in Vorarlberg.

The club said snow was falling down to 1,500 metres and the snow line would drop to as low as 900 metres in the province before it stopped snowing there.

The record for early snow in provincial capitals was set in 2007, when snow remained on the ground in some of them from 20 to 24 October. The average high in October, according to ZAMG, is 15 degrees.

The snow warnings come after weather records tumbled last week, with a number of places seeing records for the highest October temperature in many years, according to ZAMG.

It said records had been set on 7 October in Vienna-Donaufeld, with a high of 28.6 degrees, the highest in 50 years, and in Grobenzersdorf, Lower Austria, with a high of 28.5 degrees, the warmest October day there in history.