By DEB GRUVER

Staff writer

A bizarre, narrow band of snow fell overnight Monday across the northern part of Marion County, providing a stark contrast to the grassfires that have plagued the county for days.

“It vanished as soon as that sun came out,” National Weather Service meteorologist Mick McGuire said.

The Wichita office, where he works, received a report of 1.6 inches of snow around Lincolnville

“We had a light batch, 1 to 3 inches, that ran from Hays up across northwest Kansas,” McGuire said. “Then there was a real tiny band, six to eight miles wide, in northern Lincoln County and the north side of Salina. There was an even smaller band in northern Marion and Chase Counties. It wasn’t very widespread.”

A Record employee who lives north of Tampa called the newsroom Tuesday morning to say she had taken some snow photos.

“What snow?” a colleague asked.

It fell after midnight Monday, but the city of Marion was unaffected.

“We had some light rain mixed in at times,” McGuire said. “That could have accounted for how narrow that was.”

Snow is not expected the rest of the week.

“Thursday and Friday will be dry and windy days. We’ll have some fire weather concerns,” McGuire said. “A cold front is expected Friday night.”

Undersheriff Larry Starkey said he didn’t think that snow contributed to a crash about 7:15 a.m. Tuesday, when a 29-year-old man rolled his truck onto its side on 250th Rd. between Xavier and Zebulon Rds.

The river was taken to St. Luke Hospital with a possibly fractured foot or toe.

Extension agent Rickey Roberts said the snow likely wouldn’t hurt or help crops.

“Intense cold weather would bad,” he said. “The only thing we wouldn’t want for the wheat crop would be to get down to 5 or 10 degrees again. We don’t want that.

“It didn’t do that. Just a dab of moisture is not going to have an impact one way or another. Wheat is our actively growing crop. It’s far enough along now that we don’t want it to get really cold.”

Roberts said he wasn’t aware of anyone who had started planting corn.

“If we’ve got any corn in the ground, it’s a very, very small amount,” he said. “Corn doesn’t like cold weather.”