While Thursday’s snowfall was postcard-pretty and provided a rare ‘snow day’ for local children, it was no laughing matter for commercial nurseries who were hard hit by the big chill.

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Louisiana Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain said, the state is still assessing the damage from the snowfall.

Strain says, the state may ask the federal government for help.

"We were, and most everybody else was completely unprepared to deal with it," said Tom Cooper, the Production Manager at the Windmill Nursery near Franklinton.

Windmill is Louisiana's largest nursery, and they're certainly dealing with it now.

Workers spent Monday, moving plants from destroyed greenhouses, to good ones, after Thursday's snowfall crushed 50 greenhouses.

The weight of the snow literally bent the steel framing on the greenhouses and brought them to the ground.

"We've had some thunderstorms, and some tornadoes spawned out of those thunderstorms that we've had some damage to greenhouses in the past, but this, bar none, is the worst I've ever seen," said Cooper.

The LSU Ag Center reported the snowfall did more damage to nurseries than Hurricanes Ike or Gustav, and they said most of the damage is structural.  Hundreds of greenhouses statewide buckled under snow.

Cooper said there are ways to build more snow-resistant greenhouses, but they're more expensive.  And he says, in South Louisiana, there's really no reason to do that, until Thursday, when Tom Cooper's men tried everything to keep snow from accumulating on top of greenhouses.

"Workers used PVC to either smack it, or just pull it, brooms, anything that we could possibly come up with that was going to work," said Cooper.

They saved many greenhouses, but lost others.  And because greenhouses are temporary structures, at most Louisiana nurseries, they're not insured.

The LSU Ag Center says, Thursday's snowfall will cost Louisiana's commercial horticulture business at least $5 million or $6 million.