Des Moines record snow
Des Moines hasn't seen a winter storm like this week's that dropped more than a foot of snow since 2009. And the city had never recorded a snowier January 25 than Monday.

Snow started falling around noon Monday in central Iowa and didn't stop until about 10 a.m. Tuesday. The storm created hazardous conditions on roads across the state, disrupted flights into and out of Des Moines International Airport, and forced many school districts to dismiss early Monday and cancel or delay school Tuesday.

The 10.3 inches that fell by the end of Monday set a new single-day record, according to the National Weather Service. It broke a 126-year-old mark for Jan. 25, previously set when 10 inches of snow fell that day in 1895.

By noon Tuesday, the NWS said 12.9 inches of snow had fallen at the airport, the 12th-highest two-day snow total in the city's history and snowiest storm in Des Moines since a blizzard dropped 15.5 inches over Dec. 8-9, 2009.


NWS meteorologist Taylor Nicolaisen, who is based near Omaha, said up to 15 inches of snow was reported in spots between York, Nebraska, and Des Moines. He told the Associated Press it's uncommon for the region to get more than a foot of snow from a single storm, and it has been decades since some cities saw this much snow.

"A lot of people tend to misremember snow events — especially from when you were a kid. Everything felt like a foot of snow when you were a kid," Nicolaisen said. "The snow drifts were literally higher than your head when you were a kid, but that's because you were 2½ feet tall."

According to the NWS, some of the highest snowfall reports came in from Adair and Panora, where 14 inches fell by Tuesday morning.

In West Des Moines, where 13.5 inches of snow fell, Chris Borsberry said he needed four-wheel drive to make it into the Fairfield Inn & Suites where he works, and it still took him twice as long as normal to get to the hotel. Once there, Borsberry said he had to shovel the sidewalk seven times because it kept getting covered, until the snow finally quit falling.

"I got excited about that because it meant I only had one more shovel pass to do," said Borsberry, 45.

Rest of report here.