More Storm Remnants

This post is from Gary. I went to the airport to fly home today only to find out that my flight was cancelled due to bad weather in Chicago. Rapid City Airport seemed very normal, but the snow really made for some traveling issues for many. The airport was completely closed yesterday. Here is a summary from Weather Underground regarding the storm:


The epicenter for the heaviest snowfall from Winter Storm Walda was in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Not unusual for an April storm.

In this case, it was the snowfall rate that was very impressive.

At the Rapid City, S.D. airport, 20 inches of snow fell on April 9. That set a new calendar-day snowfall record for that location, topping April 18, 1970 (15.6"). Records at the airport only date to 1942, however.

The final snowstorm total at the airport site was 28.2 inches.

As Weather Underground's Christopher Burt (Wunderblog) correctly points out, it's the 24-hour precipitation records that are most meaningful, from a climatological perspective.

With that said, the all-time 24-hour record for downtown Rapid City is 22 inches from April 17-18, 1970. The storm total downtown was 22.4 inches. It doesn't appear that all fell in a 24-hour period, so that record from 1970 should remain.

If you melt down the snow, the 1.21 inches of "liquid equivalent" precipitation on April 9 was the single "wettest" calendar day in Rapid City since May 19, 2011. Certainly desperately needed for drought relief.

Due to the heavy snow in the west, and ice to the east, a roughly 350-mile stretch of Interstate 90 was shut down from Rapid City to Sioux Falls.

So, the flight yesterday was nonexistent. United Airlines automatically rebooked my flight for today. When I went to the airport today I got dropped off by Stan and went to the ticket counter to find out my flight today was also cancelled. After exploring all options available, the only solution was to go with the same itinerary for Friday. Please pray that this can happen.

While in Rapid City, Stan and I stopped for some construction materials and we also stopped at a service station named Call Of The Wild that is a showplace of animal taxidermy belonging to the man, Dr. Pankratz, who donated the property in Keystone to the Keystone Project. I thought you might like to see some of his trophies. He is a real hunter, and all of these trophies and many more belong to his collection. Many of the trophies will be displayed at the Keystone Project Ministry Center.


After returning to the Rushmore Express, Rick and I tried to drive up the hill to the Ministry Center, but the ice was too much for Rick's car and we went back to the hotel. I went to the third floor to the Safari Room where we have had all of our meals. Pat and Carla were busy there as usual. They and the others who have helped, have provided this team with very good meals and we are very appreciative of that. Some of the women have been painting all week, and some have been cooking all week, but some have helped in both. The food has been superb. The kitchen is not real big, but it has been adequate.


Friday is the last day of work for all the team. I, Gary will go to the work-site with the team for a few hours before heading to the airport around 11 AM. The rest of the team flies home on Saturday morning. Thanks for following along on this brief project.