A prolonged snow storm event with historic snowfall totals for the month of April, started Friday, April 13th, and lasted until late Sunday night April 15th.
This event was split into several different precipitation hazards, which created concerns with communicating the impacts of sleet, snow, blowing snow and blizzard conditions. As the event unfolded, this storm began apparent that it would produce record snowfall amounts, along with the highest snowfall amounts so far into the month of April. Therefore, the wording changed from significant/severe winter storm, to historic.
The first part of the storm developed early Friday morning with bands of showers, and embedded thunderstorms moving northward along the Iowa border. Severe storms were noted south of the Iowa border, with one report of severe winds that occurred in far southwest Minnesota near Magnolia. These storms moved northward into colder air aloft and produced widespread areas of sleet, small hail, but no severe storms. However, there were numerous reports across southern Minnesota where the small hail, and sleet accumulated up to 2 inches in depth.
Several automated airport observing sites (ASOS/AWOS) reported heavy rainfall, sleet and thunderstorms through the morning, and into the afternoon for the southern 1/4 of the state. By the late morning, and into the afternoon, surface temperatures cooled in west central Minnesota where the precipitation changed over to snow. As the precipitation moved further north into central Minnesota, the precipitation changed over to snow. A few locations reported moderate to heavy snowfall where locally 2 to 4 inches fell in a short period of time west of St. Cloud, Minnesota.
The next round of precipitation was in the form of sleet and heavy rain in far southern Minnesota, with snow to the north in the evening. Most of this area of precipitation quickly moved off to the east, with a lull period until early Saturday morning with the main bands of heavy snowfall developed in southwest, and into west central and east central Minnesota by noon.
Total amounts through Saturday morning ranged from locally 6 inches in west central Minnesota, to an average of 1 to 3 inches from Redwood Falls through the Twin Cities, and into west central Wisconsin near Eau Claire. There was also a band of 2 to 4 inches that fell early Friday afternoon in central Minnesota. South of the Minnesota River valley, only trace amounts were noted, with some icy spots due to overnight sleet and patchy freezing rain.
By late Saturday morning, and into Saturday afternoon, the snowfall intensified and areal coverage widened across southern and central Minnesota, and into west central Wisconsin. Snowfall rates of 1 to 2 inches per hour were common by the afternoon before the heaviest snowfall began to taper off late Saturday evening.
The second round, and the third round of precipitation, occurred with the main storm system moving across Iowa and into the Great Lakes region late Saturday night, through late Sunday evening. After Saturday afternoon, snowfall intensity varied with some waves of heavy snowfall from Saturday night, and into Friday afternoon, but the majority of the snow was light.
The worst conditions occurred early Saturday morning, through Saturday afternoon in terms of high end impacts. Strong northeast winds developed in the morning and held in the 25 to 35 mph range, with gusts of 40 to 50 mph through the afternoon and early evening. At times, surface visibility was only a few hundred feet in open country. The strong winds also combined with the higher snowfall rates, to create blizzard conditions across most of southern Minnesota, west of Interstate 35. Even the inner core of the Twin Cities had visibility so low and strong winds that a blizzard warning was issued. This was the first blizzard warning issued for the Twin Cities Metro area since the blizzard of April 14, 1983. This blizzard grounded flights at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for over seven hours Saturday, caused over 600 car accidents, nearly 1200 spin-outs, and approximately 20 jackknifed semi trailers. The storm also collapsed the 77-foot-high dome of the Vadnais Sports Center, and forced three consecutive Minnesota Twins home games to be postponed for the first time since Target Field opened. The storm caused the Minnesota Department of Transportation to close several county roads in west central, southwest and south central Minnesota Saturday morning, with Interstate 90 closed by noon, west of Blue Earth.
From Friday through Sunday morning, According to the state patrol, more than 50 injuries were reported from Friday through Sunday morning, two of which were listed as serious. One death occurred when a man in Medina ran across a highway and was struck by a vehicle.
Conditions slowly improved during the evening, but bands of snow continued. The wind speeds continued to weaken, but strong enough to create areas of blowing snow, with brief periods of whiteout condition in open country.
As the storm ended, the following are some records from this storm.
15.8 inches of snowfall at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport. This was the heaviest April snowstorm on record. It was also the 12th-heaviest snowstorm on record for any month. Plus, the airport had individual maximum snowfall totals on the day on the 15th and 16th. Additionally, by holding temperatures to the 20s or very low 30s during Saturday and Sunday, the storm enabled St. Cloud, and the Twin Cities to break records for the lowest high temperature of the day.
The following snowfall totals were the highest in the state.
21.4 inches near Madison.|20.5 inches near Victoria. |20.5 inches near Montevideo.|20.2 inches near North St. Paul.|20.0 inches near Dawson.|19.9 inches near downtown Minneapolis.|19.6 inches near St Bonifacius.