Major Winter Storm: Then & Now
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(ABC 6 News) – This week’s winter storm is not the first of the season, but it is one of the biggest.
We decided to see how it compares to another big storm you probably can remember. It was four years ago.
This week’s system overall is not nearly shaping up to the strength of the February 2019 blizzard.
The biggest similarity they have is that they took place around the same time of the month and they both produced a lot of snowfall.
While the snowfall with this system could very well surpass the totals we saw four years ago, we will miss out on the the wind gusts that we saw four years ago.
Many communities including Rochester, Dexter, Kasson, and Stewartville saw wind gusts top 50 mph with many others reached 40 mph. This time around, we will likely be seeing winds top off around 40 mph for wind gusts.
As for snowfall, the highest total we saw was 14.3″ in Rochester, with many others above 10″.
This week's system overall is not nearly shaping up to the strength of the February 2019 blizzard. The biggest similarity they have is that they took place around the same time of the month and they both produced a lot of snowfall.
While we could see higher individual totals than what we saw in 2019, you have to keep in mind with the higher wind gusts comes more snow drift.
The snowfall totals would likely have been higher in spots if it wasn’t for the extreme wind gusts.
The heavy snowfall was more consistent and the winds were even more gusty four years ago than this time still, we will be seeing more snowfall overnight Wednesday evening, and you will need to be careful on the roads both with how slick they will be and also for snow plows and snow removal trucks that will be working to clear the roads