‘Tournament Snowstorm’? Minnesota blizzard hitting as state hockey tournament begins

The Twin Cities and much of southern Minnesota will get socked with lots of snow and blizzard conditions Tuesday night into Wednesday, arriving right on schedule for the opening of the Minnesota high school boys hockey tournament.

Par for the course, right?

Lore has it that the tournament Wednesday through Saturday at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul and those in coming weeks for girls and boys basketball are a magnet for whopper snow events. And it’s true — sort of.

Starting with rain, then delivering 4 to 8 inches of snow forecast for the metro area — possibly more to the south and east — and winds howling at 45 to 55 mph, the short-lived storm Tuesday and Wednesday will be a “March classic,” said State Senior Climatologist Kenny Blumenfeld.

“We have not had anything like this all winter,” Blumenfeld said. “This will be a regional blizzard, kind of old-fashioned. It will get people’s attention.”

Myth has it that state tournaments — particularly boys basketball — bring big blizzards, as witnessed last year when a four-day storm dropped more than a foot of snow in the metro during the boys tournament. The Duluth airport picked up 17.7 inches with several observation stations across the state reporting more than 20 inches during the storm dubbed “The Revenge of the Lost Winter.”

“It was a humdinger” of a storm and curtailed what had been virtually snowless winter, Blumenfeld said. Yet the March 23-27 storm didn’t make the history books for the month’s largest snowstorms.

But a 1952 storm that clobbered St. Paul with 13.1 inches on the night of the boys basketball finals on March 22 did. The two-day total of 14.1 inches ranks as the 17th largest snowstorm of all time in the metro. Another memorable storm on the eve of the boys tournament dropped 11.4 inches on March 23, 1966, with a two-day total of 13.6 inches ranking 21st of all time, according to the Minnesota Climatology Office.

Snowstorms, defined as 4 inches of snow or more, were common at tournament time from the 1960s through the 1980s, especially during the basketball tournaments, which gave rise to the legend of the “Tournament Snowstorm.” The frequency of tournament snowstorms has dropped off in recent years, but the legend persists, Blumenfeld said.

A look at 110 years of boys basketball tournaments from 1913 to 2023 showed only 9% of the tournaments had storms meeting the threshold of 4 inches of snow or more.

With championships being conducted every weekend of March and competition running for four days on each of the month’s weeks, odds are high a storm will fall over one or more of them. And some stand out.

“There have been some doozies,” Blumenfeld said.

Seven of the metro’s largest snowfalls on record have occurred in March, with the 16.7 inches on March 3-4, 1985, and March 11-14 in 1940 tied for the month’s biggest and coming in at No. 7 overall. The largest snowstorm ever in the metro was 28.4 inches from Oct. 31 to Nov. 3, 1991.

In reality, March snow doesn’t have much to do with tournaments. Rather it’s a month of transition when the chilling cold of winter spars with the warmer moist air of spring moving in, setting the stage for storms that can be quite potent, Blumenfeld said.

As snowy and wicked as March can be, balmy and delightful weather has been more common during tournament time. From 1913 to 2023, analysis showed temperatures of 50 degrees or higher 46 times, meaning seeing 50-degree temperatures is four times more likely than 4 inches of snow during the boys basketball tournament.

The Climatology Office does not keep records for each individual tournament, but Blumenfeld said in many years it’s likely that somebody, somewhere in Minnesota will get a 4-inch snowstorm during tournaments for wrestling, boys hockey and girls and boys basketball.

“It is a pretty big target,” he said, noting the number of days competition has expanded from three days to four and the state’s vast geography.

The latest midweek blast with whiteout conditions is expected to make travel “treacherous and potentially life-threatening,” the National Weather Service said. Power poles and trees also will be susceptible to damage, the Weather Service added.

By Thursday, anything that falls is likely to begin melting away. A string of sunny days is on tap Thursday through Tuesday with temperatures moderating from the low 40s Thursday through the weekend and into the 50s Monday and Tuesday, according to the Weather Channel.