Looking Back At Northeast Oklahoma's Blizzard Of 2011

A year ago, News On 6 was delivering extended coverage of a major winter storm.

That blizzard dumped more than 20 inches of snow on Tulsa and even more than that in some parts of the state.

The city of Tulsa says it worked throughout the night ahead of the first round of the monster winter storm.

Crews applied salt to roads, but the weather proved to be more aggressive than originally expected.

Many drivers who tried to get around the city ended up getting stuck in all the snow. Even with the threat of snow, some in Green Country still took a chance to get out.

"The only reason we're getting out is to go check on our store, and milk! Make sure everything is okay. We gotta find milk. Get more milk. We thought we had enough to last out the first storm, we didn't know we were going to get it like this," said Dana and James Lay.

Other drivers ended up abandoning their vehicles. And that lead to another problem, thieves.

Tulsa Police say during the first two weeks of February last year, 68 people reported having their cars broken into.

"We had an officer stranded, they broke into his police car, vandalized it and took one of our moving radars," said Tulsa Police Cpl. Gene Watkins.

For a while it became the norm to see several people trying to get a driver unstuck from all the snow.

The Tulsa area got as much as 21 inches of snow and more rounds after that, with the grand total of a little more than 26 inches.

1/30/2012 Related Story: Remembering Oklahoma's Blizzard Of 2011

Tulsa officials say the 2011 blizzard carried a hefty price tag of $530,520.38.

Since the storm, the city of Tulsa says changes have been made.

Tulsa has 14,500 tons of salt on hand and has used less than a ton so far this year. Most of that has been sprinkled around some water main leaks on couple of sub-freezing mornings.

Tulsa has 62 spreaders and 44 snow plows. That's seven more spreaders and five more snow plows than last year. Tulsa Police has 17 more 4-wheel drive vehicles and Tulsa Transit has tire chains for all of their buses and new 4-wheel drive vehicles for its Lift program.