On This Date: Record Black Hills Blizzard Ends
On This Date: Record Black Hills Blizzard Ends
Jonathan Erdman Mon, March 2, 2026 at 10:19 AM UTC
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NWS-Rapid City, South Dakota
Last month, Winter Storm Hernando buried parts of the East Coast in feet of snow.
But 28 years ago today on March 2, 1998, parts of the Black Hills were digging out from their own historic snowstorm.
A six-day blizzard left behind at least 10 inches of snow in western South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming from Feb. 25 - March 2.
But a tiny area of the northern Black Hills saw much heavier totals. Lead, South Dakota, picked up 114.6 inches — just over 9.5 feet — of snow, South Dakota's record snowstorm and one of the nation's heaviest snowstorms of that duration east of the Rockies, according to weather historian Christopher Burt.
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According to the NWS-Rapid City recap, the feet of snow clogged roads and trapped residents in their homes for days, requiring search and rescue teams to provide food, water, clothing and heating fuel.
Why did this relatively small area of the Black Hills get buried? It's due to orographic lift.
Moist northwest winds were forced up the northern slopes of the Black Hills. When that happens, the air cools and condenses into clouds and snow was the result. Because of this, the northern Black Hills typically picks up over double the annual precipitation of the surrounding Plains, including Rapid City to its east.
A post-storm survey by NWS-Rapid City found snowfall from the storm varied from "very little snow" just west of Rapid City to the almost 115-inch total just 30 miles away in Lead.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
Source: “AOL Breaking”
