The spring storm started with pouring rain.

But by lunchtime on March 31, 1997, meteorologist Eleanor Vallier-Talbot said the rain outside the National Weather Service’s office in Taunton had transformed into rapidly falling snowflakes as large as silver dollars.

“We looked out the window and all of the sudden we saw these enormous snowflakes coming down,’’ Vallier-Talbot said Friday in a telephone interview. “We were scurrying when that started happening here.’’

The giant snowflakes raised the curtain on what became known as the April Fools’ Day Blizzard, a two-day storm that buried the entire state in snow during the early days of spring.

Twenty years later, people who lived through the surprise blizzard reminisced wearily on Friday about the ill-timed weather as snow, sleet, and freezing rain were forecast through Saturday.

This year’s storm started Friday with light snow in Boston, but weather service meteorologists predicted precipitation would intensify Saturday with the possibility of snow mixing or changing to sleet and freezing rain north of the Massachusetts Turnpike. Rain was forecast for areas south of the Pike. The National Weather Service’s strongest prediction was for 8 to 12 inches in the Lawrence area. In Boston, the service predicted 4 to 6 inches.

“I just can’t believe today’s the anniversary and we’re getting another one,’’ Vallier-Talbot said.

The 1997 blizzard paralyzed parts of Greater Boston, and three people died in Massachusetts and Rhode Island after being stricken while shoveling the heavy, wet snow, she said.

Then-Governor William Weld declared a state of emergency, Logan International Airport closed for more than a day, and parts of Interstate 95 and Route 128 were closed to traffic, she said.

High winds snapped off the top of a mast on the USS Constitution docked in Charlestown and the Boston Symphony Orchestra canceled an evening performance, according to a Globe report from the time.

The snowfall predictions for this spring’s storm aren’t as high as what fell two decades ago when Boston received 25.4 inches and Worcester got 33 inches, a record at the time, the weather service said. Worcester broke that record in January 2015 when 34.5 inches of snow fell.

Hopkinton, where the Boston Marathon started three weeks later, got 30 inches of snow.

Snow bore down the hardest in neighboring Milford, where 36 inches fell.

“No one really predicted that it was going to be anything,’’ said Dino DeBartolomeis, who was a Milford selectman at the time. “You don’t anticipate 36 inches, and then it starts coming down hard.’’

The storm brought down power lines and trees in Milford. For about a week afterward, the town’s baseball fields were a muddy mess, DeBartolomeis said.

“For a couple of days, it was real tough,’’ he said.

The biggest disruption in baseball happened in Maryland, where the Baltimore Orioles postponed opening day because of the weather, a Globe report said.

Maura Hennigan, then a city councilor in Boston, said snowplows were slow to clear streets because officials were caught off-guard by the size of the storm. Snow was in the forecast, but not as much as what fell, Vallier-Talbot said.

Boston was further hobbled because its public works department already had moved into street-sweeping operations for spring, Hennigan said.

“They had already taken all the plows off the equipment. We just got nailed,’’ she said. “Thank God we had the sun and the daylight on our side.’’

Here and there in the suburbs, the intense storm left its mark. A municipal garage in Dover collapsed and part of the roof at a car dealership in Norwell gave way, the Globe reported.

Emerson Swan Inc., a Randolph company specializing in plumbing, heating, and other products, closed its warehouse because of the storm, said Bruce MacDonald, an inside sales manager.

As snow fell, a section of roof at the 100,000-square-foot facility collapsed, damaging some inventory and an area where customers picked up orders, he said. Workers returned to the warehouse after the storm passed.

“We arrived that day and thanked our lucky stars that we made the decision to close because people could have been killed,’’ MacDonald said.

The company restored its operation within 24 hours, but the ordeal is still discussed every April 1, he said.

“When someone tells you on April Fools’ Day that there’s 2 feet of snow, it isn’t necessarily a joke,’’ MacDonald said. “It was once-in-a-lifetime thing, you hope.’’

Laura Crimaldi can be reached at laura.crimaldi@globe.com.