A panhandle hooker, also called a Texas hooker, is a name for a storm that forms in the panhandles of Oklahoma or Texas.
These storms bring interesting weather to the Midwest and Great Lake regions. The weather system gets its name from where the storm forms and intensifies.
The “hook” describes the curved path that these cyclones take, first bending to the southeast and then curving northeast to Missouri across Iowa and into southern Wisconsin and on to the Great Lakes.
Cold and warm fronts are associated with these mid-latitude cyclones.
These storms occur from late fall through early spring. They are not very common and bring some of the most memorable weather to our region, including heavy snow, strong winds and blizzard conditions.
As they pass over the Great Lakes, the warm waters can intensify the storm, generating dangerous shipping conditions.
The storm that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald ship on Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975, was a panhandle hooker.
The weather preceding the arrival of these storms can be very pleasant.
The Armistice Day Storm of Nov. 11, 1940, was another example of a panhandle hooker. Many Midwesterners woke on that morning to surprisingly warm weather and a day off from work in honor of Armistice Day. Thousands of fishermen and duck hunters headed outdoors to take advantage of the near-perfect conditions.
Most people did not realize that the warm air was the harbinger of a powerful panhandle hooker. Before 2 p.m., the cold front chasing the warm air mass arrived in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan. Temperatures dropped rapidly, in some cases more than 50 degrees.
Rain, sleet, and snow began to fall. High winds brought down trees and wires, whipped up snow into blizzard conditions, and made navigating lakes and rivers nearly impossible.
A total of 145 deaths were blamed on that storm.
