John Wheeler: It is possible for one big snowstorm to hit during an otherwise quiet winter

FARGO — Interestingly enough, two of our region’s biggest storms in history were largely stand-alone storms. One of the strongest winter storm to hit anywhere in the Great Plains or Upper Midwest struck our region very hard in early March of 1966. For four days the storm hammered us with 35-70 mph winds and a foot to 3 feet of snow. The winter, up to that point, had been very cold but with just enough snow to have kept the ground white.

The great “Super Bowl” blizzard of 1975, another four-day whiteout famous for causing a huge power outage when the Minnesota Vikings were playing in the Super Bowl, happened in January of a largely snow-less winter. Although there was more snow than this winter, the snow cover was scant enough to allow the four-day storm to scour down to the topsoil which caused more of a brown-out than the traditional blizzard whiteout.