29 Years Later: Remembering The Blizzard Of '93 That Buried Pittsburgh In Snow
By: Michael Guise/KDKA-TV News
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Pittsburgh's annual St. Patrick's Day Parade is Saturday.
It is a day for Pittsburghers to come together and celebrate as a community. But in the long history of St. Patrick's Day parades in the city, one year stands alone.
On March 13, 1993, a blizzard hit Pittsburgh on the day of the parade. The paralyzing storm closed roads and forced crews to work around the clock on cleanup duty. The major storm dumped more than 2 feet of snow on the city before it was done a couple of days later.
Another city might have canceled everything and sent the parade crowds home, but Pittsburgh's parade went on despite the third-largest snowstorm on record for the city.
Parade Grand Marshal Glenn Cannon told KDKA-TV in 2013 that Pittsburgh was the only parade east of the Mississippi River that did not cancel.
It then became known as the Blizzard of '93. In Pittsburgh, the extreme storm dumped a single-day record of 23.6 inches of snow. It's a record that still stands to this day.
Pittsburgh has seen more than 20 inches of snow falling in a single day only twice in the city's history. The only other instance was on Dec. 17, 1890, when 22 inches of snow was recorded.
