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NE Snow Drought, Snow Surplus: Who's Got It!

Feb 2, 2010; 9:15 AM ET

I blogged in late December about the snowfall compared to normal in the Northeast quadrant of our country. At that time, parts of the eastern Great Lakes and northern Ohio Valley were in a snow drought. A lot has changed since then, so let's look at the stats again. The map below shows snowfall since October 1st (the dots are the station locations; ignore the zeroes which are bad data).

The good news is that most places that you would normally expect to see snow have seen it. There are no zeros (other than ones indicating missing data). Let's take a look at major cities compared to normal snowfall through 1/31 so far:

For the season so far, New York City is doing OK. Pittsburgh & Boston are slightly above normal. Philly and Baltimore (and Washington D.C., plus most of Virginia) are out of control at over 200% their Oct-Jan snowfall already! But Williamsport, Cleveland, Detroit and Albany are lagging behind, the latter having just over half their normal snowfall through January 31. The most impressive surplus I found was Richmond, VA who has had over 400% of their normal snowfall so far!

But those stats don't tell the entire story; another story is the lack of snow since mid-December north of Baltimore. Philadelphia lucked out on December 19th, but has only seen a few inches from three events since then. And even Pittsburgh, who has been getting snow routinely, hasn't seen a storm with 3 inches or more since mid-December. The same is true here at AccuWeather HQ in State College, PA. In cities who missed the big December storm, like Albany, we're coming up on two months with no significant snowstorms. The D.C. and Baltimore area got hit over the weekend, are getting snow again tonight, and have a shot at another storm late this week, so this is not a problem for them.

The fact that the mid-Atlantic is having a banner snow year compared to normal is a good sign for our Winter Forecast which predicted above normal snowfall in this area. True, some areas to the north and south of this sweet spot have not yet achieved normal as predicted, but as I always say, we'll have to wait until (at least) April to make a final call.

I wish I could look at more cities but I'm limited to the ones that have Normals, and I haven't had time to look closer at the Midwest, Plains and New England. Tom, one of our Facebook Fans posted this graph from a local newspaper showing New York stats -- although the headline is "below normal snowfall" only Albany and Binghamton are statistically significant. Caribou, Maine is at 90%. What New England people are seeing is much below previous years but is near normal (even without big storms) with the exception of the Albany area. Blog reader Gregg points out that the lack of big storms means thin or non-existent snow cover, which, combined with the blockbuster recent years, leads to a perception of disappointment even if snow is near normal.

Quite a few people in the mid-Atlantic remarked yesterday on my blog that they were amazed at the amount of snow that they have received, if you haven't weighed in yet leave me a Comment or post on our Facebook Page.

Comments (10):

Sean:

I'm in CT and have been looking at the 180hr total precip amounts on the GFS prosite and its been heartbreaking to constantly see CT in light or dark green shades for both the 180hr and 360 hr periods. This has been the case since 1/4, with a brief exception for 3.5" of rain a few weeks back. Even tonites run, for the next two weeks, has only .11 total precip. We are in a snow drought.

Posted by Sean | February 4, 2010 9:15 PM

JW:

I am in Albany,NY and we have practically NO snow. I am a skier and this doesn't help one bit. Will this streak change before spring comes rolling around the corner?

Posted by JW | February 3, 2010 8:06 PM

jfr117:

here in hartford, we are at 69% of normal. besides one 'big' storm in early dec (which was wiped out by rain), there has been a lot of 1 inch dustings. even the 4 inches we got last week evaporated\melted very quickly so that we were brown again. another inch last night. woo hoo. very frustrating winter watching the parade of storms to the south.

Posted by jfr117 | February 3, 2010 9:05 AM

Sonshine:

Hi, Jesse! Just East of DC in Maryland, we have been blessed with nearly 6" of wonderland snow on top of what was left from the foot of snow that fell this past weekend ... and there's more to come in a few days! As you can tell, I LOVE SNOW. :)

Posted by Sonshine | February 3, 2010 8:25 AM

Brian:

For the Tuesday evening storm in Northern Virginia.....5 inches on the nose (again) for Purcellville in Loudoun County. You could walk inbetween the big fat flakes...fell at a good clip for a while. Only 2 inches on the roads as they were still warm when the snow started.

Posted by Brian | February 3, 2010 7:49 AM

Mike Bowser:

Despite the fact that we have missed out on the big storms here in Dayton, PA we have done quite well with lake effect and clippers. As a result we're above average for the year (I've been keeping records for over 30yrs.) and we have had snow cover since 12/15.

Posted by Mike Bowser | February 2, 2010 4:57 PM

Richard:

To me it really just goes to say that the weather is manipulated by the jet stream and patterns. If the pattern forces cold air to Florida then it may snow in Florida like earlier in January.

FROM JESSE: More or less, you are correct, and predicting where the jet stream will be, along with the locations of persistant high and low pressures, is essentially how you make a sesonal forecast.

Posted by Richard | February 2, 2010 4:24 PM

Rob:

Scott,

enjoy it... up here in Boston it is a far cry from the MEGA WINTER of 95-95 that dumped about 107 in. for the season... Just imagine...so far only about 28 in this year...

Posted by Rob | February 2, 2010 3:37 PM

Hank - S.Jersey:

I'm glad that you posted the caveats for Philly, Pitt and the like. Too many times folks will look at the final season totals and proclaim 'stop complaining you got X% above the norm' but fail to recognize or acknowledge that most of it came from one storm.

Posted by Hank - S.Jersey | February 2, 2010 3:24 PM

scott:

This looks to beat out 02-03 for northern Virginia. With 34.5 inches already fallen at my house and more to come, we may have a record setting season.

Posted by scott | February 2, 2010 2:30 PM

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of AccuWeather, Inc. or AccuWeather.com

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