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Good Question: How Does The Groundhog Day Blizzard Stack Up?

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Tuesday's snowstorm is shaping up to be the biggest of the season for the metro area.

This storm is a long ways away from our record, but it will beat out some of our top snowstorms over the past ten years.

The biggest snowstorm in metro area since 1891 was the Halloween blizzard of 1991, when 28.4 inches fell over four days.

The next biggest was 21.1 inches in 1985.

Tuesday's snow storm is a fraction of those totals – anywhere between four and ten inches, depending on the town.

"When you break it down, how many times do we get that from a storm? It's pretty rare," WCCO Chief Meteorologist Chris Shaffer said. "It might happen once or twice a year, and if it happens twice a year, that's been a pretty snowy winter."

Here is a list of the biggest snowfalls of the last ten seasons, according to the Minnesota State Climatology Office:

  • 06-07 12.3" (Feb. 28-Mar. 2, 2007)
  • 07-08 5.9" (Mar. 31-Apr. 1, 2008)
  • 08-09 6.0" (Jan. 12-13, 2009)
  • 09-10 9.4" (Dec. 23-26, 2009)
  • 10-11 17.1" (Dec. 10-11, 2010)
  • 11-12 4.4" (Dec. 3-4, 2011)
  • 12-13 10.6" (Dec. 8-9, 2012)
  • 13-14 9.9" (Feb. 20-21, 2014)
  • 14-15 4.2" (Dec. 26-27, 2014)
  • There was no one single snowfall that totaled more than 10 inches in the metro area during the 1970s.

    But seven of the top 20 metro snowstorms happened in the 1980s.

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