'Break out the confetti': Duluth breaks seasonal snowfall record

DULUTH - Duluth finally has something to cheer about for enduring the Longest. Winter. Ever.

With whipping winds, power outages for thousands and a sloppy, slushy mess, the city smashed the nearly 30-year seasonal snowfall record early this morning, stopping — for now — at 137.2 inches, about 2 inches above the record. The number to beat was 135.4, set during the 1995-96 winter. The third snowiest winter was nearly 75 years ago, with 131.8 inches falling in 1950.

"Break out the confetti, we broke the record!" said Krystal Kossen, a meteorologist with the Duluth National Weather Service.

And it came with a whopper of a storm. Roughly 2 inches of snow fell, but conditions worsened due to strong winds mixed with freezing rain. Mayor Emily Larson was set to commemorate the snowy record with a proclamation at the Weather Service office this afternoon, but it was canceled — in true Duluth fashion — because of the weather.

Duluthians and those in the surrounding region have ridden out snowstorm after snowstorm since fall, with multiple days of canceled school, towering snowbanks and ice-covered sidewalks.

"This year, there was literally nowhere else to put it," Duluth Heights resident Elizabeth Mayne said of the snow.

A colleague in another part of the state shared a picture of a 5-inch snowfall this winter, she said, "and I sent a picture of my 10-foot snowbank and said 'there you go.' "

Longtime northeastern Duluth resident Judy Miller said she gets the North Shore version of snowfall; always a bit more than downtown Duluth. While she's happy to see the record broken, it's been a daunting winter, she said.

"Now people can stop wishing and hoping and praying for more snow to break the record," she said. "Now, maybe spring will get here."

But up to 3 more inches of snow was expected to fall overnight, Kossen said. At one point Thursday afternoon, about 9,700 Duluth area residences lost power. At least two schools — East High School and Congdon Park Elementary — lost power for an extended period.

Some outages stemmed from wind gusts toppling trees into power lines. Easterly wind off Lake Superior blew at speeds of more than 45 mph in Duluth and even higher along the North Shore.

Bayfield also broke a snowfall record, but even earlier than Duluth. In March it sailed past 150 inches and now sits at 182.

According to the Weather Service, the least snowiest winter in Duluth was in 1900, when only 26.8 inches fell. Record-keeping began in 1885.