I was working the night shift in February 2003 when the newsroom phones started ringing. Readers wanted to know if we knew anything about the odd-looking snow balls dotting the landscape in the rural areas around Springfield. Photographer T.J. Salsman and I set out to see for ourselves what people were talking about. Turns out they are a weather phenomenon known as “snow rollers.”
Wind causes snow ‘rollers’
Feb. 12, 2003“Creepy” and “weird” were how some people described a Tuesday night weather phenomenon in which large snowballs formed in fields, yards and parking lots without human help.
More than one motorist paused to look at clusters of the snowballs – known in the eastern United States as “rollers” – that formed as strong gusts of wind from the west blew across snow that was already on the ground.
“It looks like a Mars landscape at night,” said Stacy Bowman, who noticed the unusual snowballs about 8 p.m. in fields west of Bradforton Road as she drove home from Springfield.
“At first I thought they were just clumps of sod being turned over in the field,” she said. “Then I thought maybe some kids were out, but I didn’t see any footprints around.”
The “rollers,” which were more log-shaped than round, left yards of trails behind them where newly fallen snow had rolled and picked up the snow on the ground.
Melissa Byrd, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Lincoln, said the agency received numerous reports of “rollers,” including in Logan, Macon and Menard counties.
Byrd said she has been with the NWS in Lincoln for 13 years and has never seen them before or heard of anyone reporting them.
In fact, she said she didn’t know they had a name until a colleague in Kansas told her they are called rollers out East.
A wind gust of 58 mph was recorded in Lincoln and 45 mph in Springfield. The gusts were followed by a strong cold front that moved through the area about 7 p.m. Low temperatures in the single digits were expected Tuesday night and into this morning.
Winds were expected to diminish after midnight.
In addition to the rollers, meteorologists were tracking another unusual phenomenon, “thunder snow,” that blew through Peoria before 7 p.m. and produced lightning, heavy snow and strong wind gusts. Several utility poles and power lines were toppled, Byrd said.