· Duluth News Tribune ·

Wicked wind gusts define ’07 blizzard
John Myers
Duluth News Tribune – 03/03/2007
Get out the Advil and the hot packs.
Northlanders at the head of Lake Superior spent Friday digging out from one of the fiercest blizzards in recent memory.
With all schools, most events and many offices and businesses closed for a second straight day, Twin Ports residents had plenty of time to crawl out from under the storm’s wake.
We used shovels and snowblowers, scoops and Bobcats, pickup trucks and ATVs with plows, dump trucks and graders. Many Duluthians spent the morning trying to poke holes through 6-foot drifts to find their cars, and then find the ruts to the nearest plowed roads.

The fact that lighter, pesky snow kept falling and blowing through the afternoon went almost unnoticed as Northlanders went about the cleanup. The snow was expected to end and winds subside overnight.
Measured by just snowfall — about 19 inches in Duluth by Friday evening — the storm didn’t top the all-time list. It would have had to hit 20.8 inches to crack the Top 10 snowstorms.
But measured by sheer velocity — winds over 60 mph, snow falling at 2 inches per hour at times, massive drifts and whiteout conditions — it ranked right up there with the classics.
“I’ve been here since 1987. My husband [Jim, a retired meteorologist] has been here since 1972, and we couldn’t remember anything like it,’’ said Carol Christenson, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Duluth.
From 3 p.m. Thursday to about 3 a.m. Friday — precisely predicted by the Weather Service a day in advance — the storm was shaking houses exposed to the wind as lightning flashed and thunder echoed. Travel and commerce virtually shut down. It was nearly impossible to walk outside, let alone drive.
“We’ve certainly seen more snow in a storm. But no one here can recall anything as intense as last night,’’ Christenson said. “I had gone back through [records to look at] some of the big nor’easters of the past. And they talked about drifts 8 and 10 feet high, which I think is what we have right now.’’
Hardest hit this time were areas near the western tip of Lake Superior, where winds whipped unobstructed down the lake and pummeled Duluth’s Park Point, pushing snow into 20-foot drifts and closing Minnesota Avenue with stalled vehicles and insurmountable piles of snow.
“That’s the worst wind I’ve ever seen out here,’’ said Walt Pietrowski, a Park Point resident since 1968. His house, facing the lake and the teeth of the wind, shook most of the night. “The storm back in the ‘80s lasted longer. But the drifts in our yard are higher this time.’’
Pietrowski said he might have to tunnel through some drifts to clear a path from his house to his vehicles at the street. Some of the paths he’d been shoveling were walled by 10 feet of snow. Trees 12 feet high are buried by snow.
In Beaver Bay, winds and waves spilled ice high above the Lake Superior shore. The highest recorded winds were 66 mph at Duluth’s Sky Harbor Airport on the harbor, but much of the region saw gusts to near 60 mph and more.
Much of Minnesota was buried beneath 6 to 12 inches of snow that fell Thursday and Friday, and some areas near the Twin Cities got nearly 18 inches. Some roads were closed in southern Minnesota, although the conditions weren’t as severe as in the Twin Ports. The Associated Press reported that two roofs collapsed — a bowling alley in Elk River and a warehouse in St. Cloud — and hundreds of accidents and spinouts were reported by the Minnesota State Patrol. One death had been attributed to the intense storm as of Friday evening, from a car crash in Rochester.
Duluth-area plows simply couldn’t stay on the road at the peak of the storm and called it quits until winds subsided before dawn Friday. Then plow crews quickly hit the streets and had many major arteries open by mid-morning Friday. They worked all day until their mandatory rest period, and were expected to be back at it this morning.
City buses will run their normal schedule today, DTA general manager Dennis Johnson said. One possible exception, he said, would be Park Point routes.
DTA bus service was canceled Friday.
Public works officials said it might be late Sunday before all side streets are cleared, and Duluth police continued to ask cooperation among street parkers to move their vehicles to allow plows a clear passage.
After 18 inches of snow Sunday through Tuesday from another snowstorm, Duluth has seen more than 37 inches of snow in the past week, more than doubling the city’s snowfall total for the season and tossing 2006-2007 out of the Top 10 for least snowy winters. The more than 2 inches of rain equivalent from the storms also will help, but nowhere near eliminate, the region’s long drought.
University of Minnesota climate expert Mark Seely noted in his weekly report Friday that a similar back-to-back snowstorm hit Duluth in 1892. A blizzard in the first week of March paralyzed the city, and many people could only leave their homes by climbing out second-story windows.
It wasn’t that bad this time, but some people are ready for winter to be over after back-to-back storms.
David Morris paced inside the Holiday Center downtown Friday afternoon, waiting for a cab to Superior because buses weren’t running.
“I’m tired of the storm,” he said. “I’m from Arkansas. There’s no way I’m used to this.”

Staff writer Jana Hollingsworth contributed to this story.