Few storms stand out like the one that swept through the area 20 years ago on the evening of Oct. 31.

Parents and young adults remember kicking off that night trick-or-treating in chilling winds that only grew stronger and brought rain that quickly turned streets into skating rinks.

According to the National Weather Service’s records, 11 southern Minnesota counties were declared federal disaster areas, at least 20,000 people lost electricity for multiple days, Gov. Arne Carlson declared a state of emergency for Freeborn and Mower counties, and property damages totaled $11.7 million.

At the height of the storm, a 180-mile stretch of Interstate 90 from South Dakota to Rochester was closed.

Emergency service crews had their hands full with not only icy roads and power outages, but criminals taking advantage of the situation. Burglaries happened at Sterling Drug, Trimble’s Cycle Center and Coast to Coast, along with two high-speed chases, the Herald reported Nov. 1, 1991.

While the police department was busy in town, deputies from the Sheriff’s department struggled to patrol rural areas they thought were also susceptible to burglars. Downed power lines and poles littered both Mower and Freeborn counties, which made many roads impassable.

Sheriff Terese Amazi, who was a deputy on patrol at the time, was amazed at how easily branches and poles were snapped by the wind and heavy ice sheets.

“It looked like matchsticks out there,” she said about the poles that covered many roads. “It was just incredible.”

Many animals risked freezing, and farmers burned through many gallons of diesel while powering generators — for as many as 10 days in some cases.

“We did have a farm where the cattle weren’t being taken care of,” Amazi said. “And the gutters, you couldn’t see them — because I stepped in one and got it up over my boot, and they didn’t have a backup generator, so it was quite a mess.”

Chief Deputy Mark May, recalled traveling back and forth from Austin to patrol LeRoy at the time. He also remembered the difficulty of navigating around down power lines and poles; but more than anything, he remembered how slow life became. He said it not only took a long time to get anywhere, but outlying towns were dark.

“Basically, the town looked almost like a ghost town down in LeRoy,” he said, and added it was roughly a week before those residents regained electricity.

Dan Wilson, a firefighter at the time, remembered the dire situation for some hospitalized patients, as they couldn’t get oxygen, unless by oxygen bottles. Other grief stricken residents rode out the storm at the Austin Armory, where Red Cross volunteers offered relief to roughly 120 people.

The National Guard was called upon to provide generators to rural farmsteads, according to the National Weather Service. And the National Guard armory and a local mall in Albert Lea were both used as shelters for many stranded motorists on Nov. 1 and 2.

But most of all, Wilson recalled how utilities and electrical workers felt the brunt of the storm.

“Those guys were busy. … No really, they were non-stop,” Wilson said, “We see it time and time again … just on how busy they are when we have a disaster like that.”

It wasn’t a matter of just restoring power, either, it was a three-week process of cleanup and collaboration among hundreds of area workers.

“At one time I think we had over 200 linemen from various co-ops,” said Larry Underdahl with Freeborn Mower Cooperative Services.

Underdahl, and many others, was called into work the evening of Oct. 31., and he wasn’t released until the next night. From there, Underdahl and his co-workers put in three straight weeks of 14-hour days, as they cleared roughly 1,200 broken poles from ditches and roads. Underdahl said the area around Sargeant was one of the worst, and the power relay station in that area required nearly 12 days of attention.

“There’s four overhead circuits going out of that substation,” Underdahl said. “That morning we got up there, you couldn’t see a pole standing. We knew there was a lot of work there.”

According to Underdahl, more power lines are now buried underground because of storms like that one.

Today, locals don’t talk about winter storms like they talk about the blizzard of Halloween in 1991.

“It was just kind of a surreal storm,” Amazi said. “It really was because you’ve never seen anything like it, and you’ve never seen anything like it since.”

Few could remember a worse storm; and even though local pictorial records are scarce, many vividly remember chunks of ice hanging from almost everything. The whole fiasco is a reminder for some like Amazi, who takes one lesson from that Halloween.

“I think it was just how incredible Mother Nature can be,” she said.