Snow Factory? Huge Swath Of Wisconsin Hit By Rare Manmade Snow Storm

An unexpected band of snow that stretched about 100 miles long in Wisconsin late last week surprised residents and travelers, even causing hazardous driving conditions.

The National Weather Service office in La Crosse along with the Twin Cities office detailed a sizable band of snow that extended from near Eau Claire down Interstate 94 toward Wisconsin Dells on Thanksgiving Day. The cause of the snow is what is interesting.

While some light and scattered flurries were in the forecast, the band of heavier snow that developed in this area on Thanksgiving morning was unexpected.

While it wasn't an extreme amount of snow, it did cause difficult driving conditions and even led to the closure of part of the freeway for a time due to an accident.

So, what caused this unexpected snow?

As the Twin Cities office of the National Weather Service explained, a factory near Menomonie was the culprit of this unexpected snow event.

READ MORE: What exactly is ''Lake Effect Snow", anyway?

The plume of "manmade snow" extended for about 100 miles from near Menomonie to the southeast, downwind from the factory. The wind out of the northwest was the driving force for the cold air and the direction of the plume of snow, but the science behind it is a little more interesting than that.

How does that work?

As the Twin Cities NWS office explained, conditions were in the "sweet spot" for something like this to happen. The low cloud deck and the cold air temperatures in the sky provided the perfect conditions for snow to develop.

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Steam and tiny particles from the factory combined with the cold temperatures and the "supercooled liquid water droplets in the clouds" to develop some snow.

While this isn't completely unheard of, it isn't an incredibly common occurrence. Conditions need to be just right for snow to develop, and that just so happened to be the case on Thanksgiving Day across a part of Wisconsin.