Imagine making plans to celebrate Valentine's Day, only for Mother Nature to throw a huge wrench in your festivities.
Millions across the Northeast understand this all too well after experiencing a powerful snowstorm on Valentine's Day, 2007, 19 years ago today.
It all started when a low pressure system began to impact the Mid-Mississippi River Valley the day before Valentine's Day and eventually moved to impact the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast beginning the 14th.
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The worst hit areas were the Adirondack Mountains in New York and northern Vermont, where snowfall totals exceeded 2 feet.
Burlington saw a 24-hour snowfall total of 25.3 inches, which was an all-time record that stands to this day. The previous record was 23.1 inches set on the 14th of January, 1934.
Across the southern and eastern ends of the storm, warm air mixed in enough to also bring significant icing to the Mid-Atlantic and East Coast of the Northeast, so cities like Washington, D.C., New York City, Philadelphia and Boston also saw more ice than snow.
Rob Shackelford is a meteorologist and climate scientist at weather.com. He received his undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Georgia studying meteorology and experimenting with alternative hurricane forecasting tools.
