The huge amount of snow that dumped on the St. Louis region Sunday and into Monday did break a record, but not the one you might expect.
The mixture of snow, sleet and freezing rain blew past Sunday's record for precipitation — essentially a measure of everything that fell, melted down in a rain gauge. The previous record had been set in 2005 at 1.58 inches. Sunday saw 1.87 inches.
That doesn’t mean St. Louis broke a snowfall record. The National Weather Service recorded 5.6 inches at Lambert International Airport on Sunday. To break the record set in 2014, the region would have needed 10.8 inches.
“One of the reasons why we didn't see a record snowfall amount is because a good amount of that fell as sleet, which tends to accumulate more slowly,” said Marshall Pfahler, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in St. Louis. “So a lot of that liquid kind of fell as sleet, which is more compacted and more dense than snow.”
The overall snowfall total for the storm was 8.5 inches at Lambert. But the amount varied quite a bit around the region, Pfahler said, with reports of up to a foot of snow in St. Charles County. There’s a gradient as you head south through St. Louis County.
“There's a greater amount of sleet that fell, and so that really lowers your snowfall totals,” Pfahler said. “And even as you go further south into Jefferson County, we've had some amounts closer to 4½ inches.”
Schools, government buildings and offices closed or went remote around the region Monday because of the storm. Hundreds of flights were canceled at Lambert over the weekend, according to FlightAware. Metro was providing limited public transportations services on Monday and said to expect delays. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said it responded to more than 200 calls for service Sunday night into Monday morning related to the storm.
While residents around the area fought the snow and sleet while shoveling driveways and walks, some planned to enjoy the snow day.
Asia Jackson was cleaning off her car outside her Tower Grove South apartment but was prepared to have a quiet day.
“Catch up on some reading, and probably binge-watch some TV,” she said. “Make some soup, maybe just go outside, just to get some air, just to see what the neighborhood is doing.”
Paul and Yvette Hubmann took a different approach, seizing a rare opportunity to cross-country ski in Tower Grove Park.
“Got to take advantage of the snow. We don’t get this all that often,” Paul Hubmann said. “This is great.”
The snow on their route made it easy for the couple to get to the park.
“We took the street in, there were no cars on the street, so we could ski on the street to get here,” Yvette said. “And there's only been a few pedestrians and some people with dogs.”
Even colder air is moving into the region now, Pfahler said, with temperatures rising to above or around freezing on Friday or Saturday. There’s another chance for light-accumulating snow Thursday evening into Friday morning.
STLPR's Brian Munoz contributed to this report.
