“Anybody who went through the Halloween blizzard doesn’t forget it.”
That is Pete Boulay of the Minnesota State Climatology Office talking about the historic snowstorm that began on October 31st, 1991:
Minnesota saw a range of 12 to 20-plus inches of snow anywhere from south central Minnesota right through the Twin Cities and on up into Duluth and the Arrowhead. In the Twin Cities it remains the biggest snowstorm on record with 28-point-four inches.
Several inches fell on Halloween night while kids were trick-or-treating, but most of the snowfall came on November 1st. Pete Boulay says, “Halloween was Thursday, and Friday was the day it snowed the most. And that was the day they canceled schools everywhere and the hardest part was trying to figure out how to close schools because a lot of people tried to trudge to school and then they closed them down.”
Boulay says a lot of people do not remember the record-setting subzero temperatures that followed on November 3rd and 4th.
This Halloween is going to be nothing like the historic 1991 blizzard. According to Boulay, “Average high for Halloween is right around 50 degrees in central and southern Minnesota in the north of course it is in the 40s. But it has been a while since we have had really a balmy Halloween…usually trick or treating time has been hovering right around freezing or a couple of degrees on either side of it.”
The last Halloween with above normal temperatures was 2007.
