Upper Midwest hit with rare October snowstorm

FARGO, N.D. - Parts of the upper Midwest were blanketed with as much as a foot of snow this week in a rare October snowstorm.

"If you want to play the statistics game, there's about a 5 percent likelihood in the historical record that you see snow like this within the first week of October," said Mark Ewens, with the National Weather Service.

The NWS reported accumulations of 12 to 14 inches near Roseau, Minn., in the northwestern corner of the state near the Canada border.

A little farther west, in Fargo, N.D., the Thursday morning commute started out rotten and just got worse, with wind gusts touching 40 miles per hour and wet, heavy snow that made driving conditions very tricky.

PHOTOS | Rare October snowstorm hits upper Midwest http://bit.ly/QOdkAS

In an area that saw temperatures in the mid-80s as recently as Sunday, more snow was expected to fall throughout the weekend.

The Weather Service says more than six inches could fall in southeastern Wyoming and the Nebraska panhandle through Sunday morning.

^{NBC News contributed to this report}