I've seen several references to our current weather debacle as a "rare winter storm," but I don't think that's quite accurate. We may not have the kind of winter my Minnesota in-laws do, but we in metro Atlanta get some amount of snow every year, and pretty often--at least every other year, sometimes a couple of years in a row--it gets deep enough and sticks around long enough so that we miss a day or two of school or work.
Here are some pictures from three years of snow, 2009, 2010, and 2011. In 2011 we got at least four inches of snow, and the schools were closed for a full week.