If you lived in North Carolina in 2000, you will probably remember the morning of January 25.  A record snow storm that started on the night of January 24 was just starting to wrap up.  Some locations around the Triangle measured up to two feet of snow from the storm.

The snow total at the Raleigh-Durham airport was 20.3 inches.  That stands as the highest official snowfall on record for the Raleigh area.

The state's mountains completely missed out on the snowfall.  A band of a foot of more fell from east of Charlotte across the western Sandhills to the Virginia border just north of Durham and Raleigh.

Around 100,000 electric customers lost power during the storm.  Schools and businesses were closed for days as lows dropped into the single digits for a few mornings after the storm.  

The heavy snowfall was a surprise as the storm had not been well forecast.  Computer forecast models had done a very poor job showing the winter storm's intensity even less than a day before the snow started.

Research into the January 2000 snow storm at North Carolina State University has helped to improve winter storm forecasts since 2000.  

Click here to read more about the January 2000 winter storm and the research into the storm from the National Weather Service in Raleigh.