May snowstorm breaks 117-year-old record in Minnesota

While the calendar shows it's more than six weeks into spring, Mother Nature dealt a wintry blow to Minnesota with a winter-like storm that unleashed historic snow amounts in some locations on Wednesday into Thursday.

The same storm system that brought an outbreak of severe weather to the South-Central states through the first portion of this week created enough cold air to produce a zone of heavy accumulating snow on its northwestern side.

Snow fell along a zone from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Duluth, Minnesota. While not accumulating, snowflakes even managed to fall in parts of Minneapolis.

Through Thursday morning, Duluth was blanketed with 10.6 inches of snow for this event and 10.9 inches total for the month, leading to a number of broken snowfall records, according to data from the National Weather Service. One spot just southwest of Duluth reported 12 inches of snow as of Thursday afternoon. 

The 8.3 inches on Wednesday, May 8, set the all-time record for most snow on a single day in the month of May. The previous record was 5.5 inches, set on May 10, 1902. The burst of May snow also shattered the record for the snowiest month of May ever in Duluth, eclipsing the previous record of 8.1 total inches of snow set in May of 1954. It was also the snowiest May 8 in Duluth history as the more than 8 inches of snow surpassed the previous record for the day of 5 inches set way back in 1924. Record-keeping began in 1884.

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