AUSTIN (KXAN) – The Feb. 2-3 ice storm brought widespread freezing rain and accumulating sleet to Central Texas. Officially, 0.1″ of sleet accumulated at Austin-Camp Mabry on Thursday with 0.2″ of sleet accumulating at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport the same day.

Technically it did snow in Austin during the early morning hours on Thursday, but weather recording instruments only picked up falling snow for nine minutes.

In the weather record books, sleet accumulation and sleet depth get recorded as snow.

Because of this, several snow records were set or broken at both Camp Mabry and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

Snowfall record

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport set a new snowfall record for Feb. 3 with 0.2″ recorded. While this was all sleet and not snow, it breaks the old record of a “Trace” of snowfall set on that day in 2011.

At Austin-Camp Mabry the 0.1″ of sleet that fell on Feb. 3 did not break the previous snowfall record of 0.3″ on that day in 1996.

Snowfall is the amount of new snow (or sleet) that fell on a given day.

Snow depth records

At Austin-Camp Mabry, the snow depth of “Trace” on both Feb. 3 and Feb. 4, 2022 is now the new record snow depth for those two respective dates.

The same is true at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport where a trace of snow depth is now the record to beat for both Feb. 3 and 4.

Snow depth is the amount of snow (or sleet) still on the ground on a given day.

Snow depth, like snowfall, does not distinguish from sleet versus snow — it all gets lumped together.