The Halloween 'Blizzard' Still Haunts, 20 Years Later

A senior at Sioux Falls O'Gorman High School on Oct. 31, 1991, my thoughts weren't with the weather forecast on this soon-to-be unforgettable day.

It was with my high school football team.

I was a bleacher bum. My buddies and I had been in the Front Row (our nickname) at every home game since junior year. We had megaphones, noisemakers and face paint. We were die hard fans.

And this was the playoffs. The weather didn't matter. The bigger question was who was driving to Brandon, the site of the game.

It's so hard to believe it's been 20 years.

So when the forecast said "up to two feet" of snow was possible, we laughed. We knew we'd slosh through the sleet and muck and watch our friends roll over our crosstown, public school rival - Sioux Falls Roosevelt.

The snow started just as lunch rolled around. Actually, it was more like sleet. If you remember, southern Minnesota (follow I-90) had a lot of frozen rain. More than 20,000 people were without power–in some spots for several days.

We hit the game anyway, but the precip changed, and it was snowing. With our guys comfortably on their way to a big win (a 20-0 shutout) we headed home - through whiteout conditions.

And then it just kept coming. And coming.

We blew snow and shoveled snow out of our driveway at least three times–my father and I. The plows would come by and we'd be out again, and soon our mailbox was only a memory. And we only received about 10 inches. Like I said, lots of rain.

I heard about the chaos is caused here in the Twin Cities for a couple of days. My aunt and uncle, who were in Bloomington at the time (now live in Lakeville), said the city was just brought to a complete stop.

The Minnesota Climatology Office shared some historical facts behind the storm with a post today.

Last year's storm, which hit on the night of Dec. 10 and rolled into Dec. 11, is probably the closest thing we've seen since. But two things separated that one: it hit on a weekend, and it dropped "only" about 18 inches of snow in the heaviest places.

It was enough to collapse the aging Metrodome, but it didn't pack the crushing blow of the 1991 storm.

What are your memories of the 1991 "blizzard?" Feel free to find some old photos and add them to mine, over there on the right.