*You'll notice that station as reporting a 9" seasonal total on the map below, and I explicitly ignored that anomalous station while doing the analysis. I don't buy it either.

ORIGINAL POST:

I got a few complaints over the winter from snow lovers living in the Southeast, especially Virginia and North Carolina, who felt that they had been shafted by this year's snowfall, so I set out today to prove or disprove this theory.

First, we must know what "normal" snowfall is in these areas. Here's a map from NCDC, based on 1960-1990 data:

From this it looks like you'd expect (outside of the mountains) to get 3-12" in North Carolina and 12-24 inches of snow in a season in most of Virginia.

Let's take a look at snowfall (in inches) in some individual cities in this area (NORMAL / THIS SEASON):

Lynchburg, VA: 18.4 / 3.1 (17% of normal)
Norfolk, VA: 7.8 / Trace (0%)
Richmond, VA: 13.8 / 0.3 (2%)
Wallops Island, VA (where they keep the big dishes): 8.4 / 1.4 (17%)
Greensboro, NC: 9.1 / 0.3 (3%)
Raleigh, NC: 7.5 / 1.6 (21%)
Charlotte, NC: 5.5 / 1.0 (18%)
Asheville, NC: 15.2 / 1.9 (13%)

Normals were obtained from NCDC. Actuals were obtained from AccuWeather.com Premium.

What it sounds like from this is that southeast Virginia did, in fact, get shafted, but as you go south into North Carolina, it gets a little better (for snow lovers), but nowhere near normal. Further to the south, the Asheville statistics (and those in southeast Tennessee -- an area I didn't have time to explore more) indicate that it got worse again.

I pulled this map, centered on North Carolina, from our Pro site, which summarizes that data and adds more:

I have attempted to "analyze" the map. This is something we were taught to do in school, and unfortunately everyone's analysis ends up being different, but the basic idea is to draw lines in between groups of numbers so that it's easier to see highs and lows. On a map such as this, where stations are sparse, especially in the mountains, the analysis is somewhat objective. But it seems to support this data.

I also created an animated snow cover map that seems to confirm this. Click here to view it:

Now, keep in mind this is Air Force snow cover estimates, done mostly if not all by satellite (I think), so they could be prone to errors, especially for light snows. Comprehensive snowfall totals don't get databased or mapped out by the government, who receives the data.*

However, there is another analysis of snow cover, done by NOAA, which combines satellite data with sparse observational data (I think). You can see a loop of their data at this URL. It wasn't as easy to analyze as the Air Force data, but looking at their maps, they key in on several storms that went further south or east than the Air Force claimed on 1/19 [GE], 1/22 [GE], 2/2 [GE] and 2/14 [GE]. You can see their maps of those events below; if you have Google Earth, click on the [GE] links to see the data in 3D. You'll have to turn off "Snow Water" and turn on "Snow Depth" in the left-hand navigation of Google Earth to view the correct data.

When you put them all together, it looks like some snow fell everywhere in the Carolinas and Virginia except for the immediate coastal plain of the Carolinas.

NOTE: Technically, we should lop off some of Northeast North Carolina because My Buddy Scott's Blog [JessePedia]
about snow cover in Northeast North Carolina on January 29th, which the NOAA analysis missed.

The NWS in Raleigh Durham, North Carolina also has nice maps of the Jan. 18th and February 1st events. I also quoted significant snowfalls into South Carolina and Alabama with the Feb. 1st event.

So, in summary, it does seem that southeastern Virginia got the short end of the snow stick -- and the Carolinas only did a little better. Well, snow lovers, better luck next year (unless of course a Blizzard socks the East Coast before March or April is over. Anything can happen.)

*Most of the NCDC Cooperative snow maps are unavailable at this time -- they have, in the past, created seasonal maps which would probably be more accurate on this sub-regional basis, than the satellite analysis.

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