42nd anniversary of St. Louis snowstorm
ST. LOUIS – Tuesday and Wednesday mark the 42nd anniversary of the historic snowstorm in St. Louis.
Surrounding areas saw up to 20 inches of snow, leaving schools, businesses, and offices closed for a week.
“This storm started as a relatively weak storm, but it did manage to bring really warm and moist air into our area from the south. At the same time, there’s really a strong blast of arctic air that was coming down from the north and those two colliding together right on top of the St. Louis region just resulted in a tremendous amount of precipitation,” Ben Herzog from the National Weather Service said.
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The precipitation began as rain before transitioning to snowfall for 18 hours, falling at a rate of two to three inches per hour.
16 people lost their lives during the snowstorm.
Although it was called the blizzard of 1982, under St. Louis Lambert International Airport, the storm didn’t reach blizzard criteria.
“We’ve got very specific criteria for something to be considered a blizzard,” Herzog said. “Winds have to be at least 35 mph and the visibility has to be at least a quarter of a mile or less. We had a quarter of a mile visibility… but the highest (the winds) got was about 26 mph.”
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