Weekend snowfall could earn this winter a spot among the Twin Cities’ 10 snowiest

Nick Woltman, Pioneer Press
·4 min read

This winter is shaping up to be among the snowiest on record in the Twin Cities.

Although it’s only March, the flakes that fall between now and Sunday could earn the winter of 2022-23 a coveted spot among the metro’s top 10 snowfall seasons since 1875.

The Twin Cities can expect to see another 1-3 inches of snow on the ground by Friday morning, and a second round of precipitation expected to arrive Saturday will likely bring at least a couple more, said Eric Ahasic, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chanhassen.

A winter weather advisory was in effect for most of Minnesota south of Interstate 94 — including the Twin Cities — until 6 a.m. Friday, while the southeastern corner of the state was under a winter storm warning.

When the snow began falling on Thursday morning, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport had already logged 75.3 inches since our first dusting in October. That left us a mere 3.1 inches from breaking into the top 10, edging the 2017-18 season that saw 78.3.

“Will we get there? Probably not tonight,” Ahasic said Thursday afternoon. “But when you add up what we’ll see today and what we’ll see Saturday, I think there seems to be a pretty good chance. … I think probably by the weekend, we’ll be into the top 10.”

Managing the streets

With all this snow on the ground, St. Paul plows have had trouble keeping up. City officials on Wednesday instituted a one-sided parking ban on city streets to make sure emergency vehicles can navigate them.

A one-sided parking ban raises the possibility that even in the event of a significant snowfall, St. Paul might not have to call a snow emergency. Then again, when the city last instituted a one-sided parking ban in 2019, officials temporarily suspended the ban to accommodate a truncated snow emergency, which was limited to 24 hours.

“We didn’t have any major issues in 2019 that I recall,” said Lisa Hiebert, a spokesperson for St. Paul Public Works. “Residents understand that they need to move their cars in order to allow us to plow their streets. They ultimately want their streets safe and passable, too. It’s frustrating for all of us, our residents and our drivers, when people are not complying and moving their cars. It really is a community effort that everyone has to work together in these situations.”

Hiebert added that this year, “we held off on this one-sided parking ban for as long as we possibly could. The mayor, the director of Public Works and (St. Paul Fire Chief Butch Inks) all said ‘it’s time.’ We all recognize that this is not easy for our residents who need to have on-street parking.”

More snow to come?

Depending on what the weather does over the next couple of months, this winter could easily climb higher into the history books. Eighty-five inches of total accumulation would place it in the top five snowiest.

And the rest of March is shaping up to be chilly, so Ahasic said he wouldn’t be surprised to see more precipitation falling as snow as the month rolls on.

“Obviously there’s still a lot of March left, and you can never rule out a (snowstorm) in April,” Ahasic said. “We’re not done yet.”

The metro’s No. 1 snowiest winter in the past century and a half was the 1983-84 season — and that record wasn’t set until April 30.

A powerful spring storm that year dumped nearly 10 inches on the Twin Cities in 24 hours, bringing the seasonal total to a whopping 98.6 inches. (The storm struck just three days after a tornado tore through the metro.)

A colder March and more powdery precipitation would also give us a fighting chance at setting another top 10 record this winter: consecutive days with at least an inch of snow on the ground.

Thursday marked the 100th day in a row that the Twin Cities were blanketed by at least an inch of snow cover. Another couple of weeks, and we’ll edge out a run that ended on March 18, 1953.

Minnesota’s ample snowpack could become a liability when the spring melt arrives, though.

On Thursday, the National Weather Service upgraded its 2023 spring flood outlook for the Upper Mississippi, Minnesota and Chippewa river basins to “well above normal.”

“The addition of more rain and snow over the past two weeks has raised the amount of water in the snowpack to very high levels for this time of year,” the NWS said in a bulletin.

Ahasic said temperature patterns over the next couple of months will determine the severity of spring flooding. If the weather warms gradually over several weeks, the snowmelt will trickle downstream with minimal flooding, but a rapid rise in temps could cause real problems.

“There’s a lot of liquid sitting the snowpack we have,” he said. “The longer we go into March and April with this snow on the ground, the more chance it has of melting all at once or over a short amount of time.”

Related Articles