After the freezing rain, I had to scrape our deck window just to see out.

Top one-day snowfalls in Rochester:

1. March 18, 2005, 19.8 inches - see this blog post and this one

This was the event that got me started on blogging. I was at home all day and played around with starting a blog. I blogged the above post about the storm and was amazed to find that an editor who had his own blog at the Post Bulletin commented on my blog that same day. It was eye-opening to me to think that you could communicate whatever you wanted and the world could see it immediately.

2. January 22, 1982, 15.4 inches - We can't remember this one. Amy wasn't born yet. We lived in the apartment in N Rochester at the time

3. April 26, 1988, 13 inches - I was in Ft Lauderdale for an IV evangelism project when this happened. Nancy remembered walking on big drifts and thinks she shoveled it herself (pre-shoulder problems). I remember calling home in 90° weather and wishing I could help her out.

4. March 10, 1956. 10.8 inches

5. Nov. 25, 1952, 10.6 inches

6. (tie) Nov. 10, 2006, 10.5 inches - see this blog post

6. March 13, 1997, 10.5 inches - We don't remember this one either.

8. Dec. 25, 1955, 10.3 inches

9. March 22, 1952, 10.2 inches

10. Nov. 18, 1957, 9.7 inches

It was a lot of snow but nowhere near a record

2/28/2007 8:36:44 AM

By Mike Klein

The Post-Bulletin

The 12.8 inches of snow Rochester received this weekend was a back-breaker for those who had to shovel their driveways and sidewalks.

But it wasn't nearly a record. The 7.6 inches on Sunday and 3.4 inches on Saturday didn't even come close to breaking into the highest one-day snowfall for the area.

The highest one-day snowfall amount was just about two years ago, with 19.8 inches on March 18, 2005, which was a Friday.

The second highest was 15.4 inches on Jan. 22, 1982, and it made quite a mark on the area.

That hellacious Friday storm brought the area to a stop. Nearly all businesses closed Friday, including Mayo Clinic and IBM. Even the city postal carriers stopped delivering.

Snowfall alternated with freezing rain all day Friday, making the roads extremely slippery. It turned into snowfall in the evening, and just kept falling until 10 a.m. Saturday.

Winds gusted from 25 to 40 mph on Saturday, so that blowing and drifting snow reduced visibility to zero.

The previous two winters, snowfall was far short of normal, but the storm more than made up for it. In the days after the 1982 storm, many hardware stores sold out of snow shovels.

The huge amount of snow caused problems the rest of the winter, narrowing some four-lane streets to two lanes and some two-lane streets to a single lane. A few weeks later, the city's Public Services Department reported it was receiving about 15 calls a day complaining about narrow streets.