Minnesota Snow from a Southern US Perspective

I am fortunate to have joined a talented group of bloggers for the Global Writing Challenge. Each month, we write about a very broadly defined topic, and the responses are quite varied. The group includes Deb’s World, Marsha in the Middle, MK’s Adventures, Rosie Amber, Suzy Turner, Women Over 50 Living Well,   and now me.

This month, I selected the topic of "Snow" because cold, snowy winter weather is the defining feature of January in Minnesota. My fellow bloggers who lives in other parts of the world will no doubt have very different reactions to this theme!

Although I have been living in the Twin Cities of Minnesota for about 12 years, my perspective on our snow situation remains heavily influenced by spending 45 years in the southern United States...in some places that do get at least some snow and others that really do not.

Here are some of my observations about Twin Cities snow.

1 - Twin Cities snow starts early!

The snow doesn't wait for the winter solstice, or Thanksgiving, or even Halloween in some years to start falling. My take is that September is usually safe from snow, October is a toss-up, and November is guaranteed to have snow.

The average date of first measurable snowfall (i.e., at least 0.1") in the Twin Cities is November 4.

By comparison, here are average dates from places I've lived in the southern US:

Tulsa, OK - December 18

Houston, TX - snow is a rare event so there is no average date

Austin, TX - snow is a rare event so there is no average date

Winston-Salem, NC - November 20

There is something strange to me still about looking out at a snow-covered winter wonderland in October! But at least there is something a bit exciting about the first snow falls of the season.

Fall Snow - St Paul, Minnesota - 10/20/2020

2 - Twin Cities snow ends late!

While people elsewhere are enjoying the arrival of warmer spring weather, in Minnesota we know that snow can easily continue into April and that the snow season isn't truly over until May.

I couldn't find data on the average date of the last measurable snowfall, but the average date for the last inch of snow cover in the Twin Cities is March 31. This isn't a metric that is even tracked in the southern cities I've lived.

Our first Easter of the Covid lockdown (which I called "Isolation Easter") was particularly grey, gloomy, and wintry-looking with snow on the ground...not exactly in the spirit of renewal and rebirth that I associate with the season.

Spring Snow - St Paul, Minnesota - 4/12/2020

3 - We sometimes get a lot of snow at once!

Luckily we don't routinely get the gigantic snowfalls common in places that get lake effect snow, but in the Twin Cities, we are quite used to snowfalls of 6" (15cm) or more.

Robert and I have experienced 3 of the top 25 snowfalls here:

#12: 15.8" April 13-16, 2018 - the "Thunder Blizzard"

#14: 15.1" January 2-5, 2023 - the "Big Mess"

#23: 13.4" February 21-23, 2023 - courtesy of Winter Storm Olive

13 Inch (33 cm) Snow Fall - St Paul, Minnesota - 2/23/2023

4 - Every winter is snowy!

Average total snowfall in the Twin Cities is around 51" (130 cm) per year. The 2022-23 season was a very snowy one - the 3rd snowiest on record at 90.3" (229 cm) - which was luckily during the post-Covid work from home era.

This greatly exceeds the average amount of snow I was used to before:

Tulsa, OK - 9" (23 cm)

Houston, TX - 0"

Austin, TX - 0.25" (0.6 cm)

Winston-Salem, NC - 5-8" (13-20 cm)

Yet Minnesota is only the #11 snowiest state in the country, falling far behind places like Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Alaska. We are really more of a stand-out for how cold our winter temperatures are (this site puts us at #3) rather than how much snow we get. But it's enough snow to satisfy me.

5 - Snow sometimes misses us to the south!

This is probably the most astonishing thing I've discovered about Minnesota winters: that sometimes we are too far north to get the snow that hits in other areas of the Midwest.

Growing up in the southern US, my idea was that the farther north you are, the more likely you are to get snow...and while this holds true for overall snowfall in a season, it doesn't work for any given snow storm.

6 - Twin Cities snow is often just snow...or at least it used to be!

What is snow? What an absurd question! Snow is "a type of solid precipitation consisting of ice crystals that grow and aggregate into snowflakes as they fall from the atmosphere to the ground." It might be wet, it might be powdery, but it's just snow. I'd say most of the snow in the Twin Cities is truly just snow, especially during the core winter months of December through February.

But in the southern US, "snow" can be a general term that is used for a very different meteorological phenomenon: the dreaded "wintry mix" that is a combination of snow, sleet, and/or freezing rain.

I remember the time a few years into my job here in the Twin Cities (perhaps 2018 or so) when we had wintry mix falling in the morning before work. I think literally every person who came into our department loudly described how absolutely terrible the conditions were and how difficult and dangerous it was to drive on the streets because of the ice.

And I said, "Yes, this is a 'wintry mix.' What we are experiencing right now is basically what every 'snow' in the south is like." Lifelong northerners were astonished to realize that when they saw news footage about people in a southern state freaking out over a couple inches of "snow" that it wasn't actually snow snow but instead this nasty, slippery, unpredictable stuff.

But the times, they are a-changing, and wintry mix is becoming a more common phenomenon in the Twin Cities as our winters are warming. So Minnesotans who aren't up to speed with wintry mix yet are probably going to be learning about it through painful personal experience.

To wrap up this post, I asked Google's AI: Why can't southerners drive in snow US? And the response was pretty good, I think, but it didn't account for the different kinds of "snow" that people experience in different regions! Let me tell you that there is a world of difference between driving on just snow (even packed snow) and wet, freezing sleet and ice.

Check out what other bloggers have to say about snow:

Debbie: Snow thoughts from a sunburnt country - the contrasts of being on opposite sides of the world to where snow is falling.

Marsha: Marsha doesn’t teach anymore, but she will always love a good snow day!

Mary Katherine: She is on a break from blogging.

Rosie: Rosie brings us some books with snowy themes.

Suzy: Suzy writes about living without snow and why travelling to find it made snowy holidays feel extra magical.

Sue: She is on a break from blogging.

Is snow a part of winter where you live? Have you ever lived in places that got snow every year? Do you get "wintry mix" where you are? How much snow is "enough snow" or "too much snow" for you?

Blogs I link up with are listed here.