Image credit: NOAA/National Weather Service
A band of moderate snow, with a narrow strip of heavier snowfall rates, affected central and southeastern Minnesota from the afternoon on Thursday March 21st, into early Friday March 22nd, 2024. Accumulations were generally 2-5 inches, but areas near St. Cloud, Big Lake, Zimmerman, St. Francis, and Chisago City reported 6-8 inches.
The snow fell in association with a compact area of low pressure moving along a warm/cool boundary to the southwest and south of Minnesota. Accumulating snow fell first in the late afternoon and evening over central Minnesota, and then began shifting south and east through the night. The main area of accumulations covered only about a third of the state, basically between US Highways 10 and 212 in western and central Minnesota, passing through the Twin Cities, and extending southeastward to Lake City, Winona, and Rochester.
In the Twin Cities, the 1.6 inches that fell on the 21st and the 1.3 inches on the 22nd were the third and fourth calendar days, respectively, of the 2023-24 snowfall season with an inch of snow or more. Other stations recorded anywhere from their third to their seventh inch-plus snowfall of winter. For comparison, by this date last year, most stations had observed 15 to 30 such days. What a difference a year makes!
Although this snowfall did occur during the boys' State Basketball Tournament, it does not appear to have crossed the 4-inch threshold in the Twin Cities, and therefore does not count as a famed "Tournament Snowstorm".