Highly anticipated, yet still numbing, the Christmas blizzard of 2010 was born of a quirky Pacific weather system that dropped some 20 inches of rain in parts of California over nearly a week, and 17 feet of snow in some parts of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
Forecasters quibbled for a week over the path of the storm as the nation watched in anticipation of a possible White Christmas. Some areas in the South received the first significant Christmas snowfall since just after Reconstruction.
Only two days before it hit, many forecasters believed the storm would chug off the Atlantic coast and touch land only in New England. Instead, it stuck close to the shore, picking up moisture out of the Gulf Stream and dropping it on much the East Coast on Dec. 26, establishing windy drifts that grew to four feet in some places and affecting over 70 million Americans.
The storm cancelled at least 4,000 flights. It was the sixth largest snow storm in New York city history and was punctuated by a rare "thundersnow" phenomenon as lightning flashed through the blizzard.
