Northern Plains March Snow Drought Stats

We issued this map yesterday and I wanted to expand on it with some additional statistics; if my numbers are correct this is the least snowy March in more than 15 years for much of the Northern Plains.

I looked up statistics for major cities that report average snowfall and this is what I found for an Average March vs. March 2010:

Minneapolis, Minnesota: None vs. 10.5"
Billings, Montana: 0.3" vs. 10.2"
International Falls, Minnesota: 0.2" vs. 9.3"
Sioux Falls, SD: 0.5" vs. 8.0"
Fargo, North Dakota: Trace vs. 7.5"

In summary, all these locations have received essentially no snow this month, versus normals close to 10 inches - quite astounding. I looked back to try to find a comparison... although 2000 had a snow drought too, none of these numbers beat that year, in fact this is the least snow that any of these cities have received during March dating back to at least 1995 (the set of records that I looked through).

With a heat wave expected during the next week, there is virtually no chance that any of these stations will receive further snowfall. I wondered how snowy the winter season had been so I took a look at those stats - and it varied from 72% at International Falls to 138% at Sioux Falls but overall not that far from normal - it's March that really sticks out like a sore, snowless thumb.