Snow Depth Days
of the Northeast: 2011-2012

The season in review

New England occasionally gets snow in October. This year Penacook got a foot and a half, Peru, MA got 30 inches. Connecticut had 600,000 customers without power. Many places set new records for October snow, and amounts challenged the November records too. Melting was quick, what with the sun being at the same height as it is in mid February and the ground being warm.

November was, not surprisingly, less snow and fewer Snow Depth Days. December was, quite surprisingly, less snow and fewer Snow Depth Days than November. Like, nearly nothing and one of the lowest December snow totals on record. I'm hoping the bare ground and some cold weather will result in a major tick kill. January is usually one of our snowiest months. This year we got less snow than we did in October. January did have some cold nights, with three nights going slightly below zero, but ten days going above 40. February is also one of our snowiest months, but every place I track had less snow than in January! Meteorological winter is the three months December, January, and February. My snowfall total for the season is 15.2" - less than fall's 21.0"! The SDD total for the season, 170, is a new record low, beating 2001/2002's 226 SDDs.

Daily/Monthly Data

The following table summarizes the snow fall and depth days from sites that are posting that data on local weather observations mail lists and a couple others. If people also prepare Web pages for daily information for their site, I'll include links to them. Cells under the "snow" column are the snowfall for the site in that month, under "SDD" are the depth days for the month.

Location October November December January February March April May
Snow SDD Snow SDD Snow SDD Snow SDD Snow SDD Snow SDD Snow SDD Snow SDD
Fairhaven MA 0.9 1 0 0 0 0 11.5 25 2.6 3 0.2 0
Marlboro MA 7.5 12 0 1 0 0 8.1 16 5.7 5 3.1 30.5
Pepperell MA 16.8 19 0 8 0.4 0 8.5 35 4 2 8.3 53
Poland Spring ME 15.7 21 10.6 39 3.2 9 13.5 73 8.9 98 13.1 65
Bow NH 28.7 31 4.2 27 1.2 3 12.4 75 5.5 94 11.9 107
Bristol NH 11.8 17.7 6.8 28.7 3.3 3.8 13.5 92.2 6.4 63.8 12.5 64.5
Penacook NH 17.3 22 3.7 17 1.1 1 10.4 54.5 3.7 24.5 13.4 51
Charlestown RI 1.4 1 0 0 0 0 9.6 17 3.2 3 0 0
Woonsocket RI 2.7 4 0 0 0 0 8.7 18 3.7 3 1.5 0
Mt. Mansfield VT 1 3 11.1 46 27.5 198 30.8 953 28.8 1513 17.5 1640 8.5 960 1 194

2011-2012 season to end of last month

The persistence quotient is lower than the ultimate value if there is still snow on the ground at the site. This data will be updated each month.

Location Snowfall Depth Days Persistence
Quotient
Fairhaven MA 15.2 29 1.9
Marlboro MA 24.4 64.5 2.6
Pepperell MA 38 117 3.1
Poland Spring ME 65 305 4.7
Bow NH 63.9 337 5.3
Bristol NH 54.3 270.7 5.0
Penacook NH 49.6 170 3.4
Charlestown RI 14.2 21 1.5
Woonsocket RI 16.6 25 1.5
Mt. Mansfield VT 126.2 5507 43.6

Contributors

Name Location
Dennis Bollea Fairhaven MA
A Cadoret Woonsocket RI
Wayne Cotterly Poland Spring ME
Paul Hansen Marlboro MA
Jim Hilt Bow NH
Chris Seeber Charlestown RI
Paul Venditti Pepperell MA
Ric Werme Penacook NH

Credits

Jim Corbin, a meteorologist from Rhode Island, proposed the concept of both snow depth days and the persistence quotient, but he didn't have good names for them.  After a bouncing around various ideas, I came up with Depth Days.  It seems to fit into colloquial speech well, e.g. "When mired in the Depth Days of February, she thought fondly of the Dog Days of August." Of course, none of us snow lovers would ever think that. I picked Persistence Quotient while putting this page together, we'll see how it wears with time.

Musings

I think depth days is a great statistic, and I'm surprised that it is catching on slowly outside of the NE Weather Spotters mail list. I never expected that the NWS would embrace it quickly, but I had hoped that TV meteorologists would start using it, in monthly summaries, if nothing else. It would be nice if ski areas would use it, but they may not wish to if they are not likely to be #1 consistantly. (And if only one area reports depth days, it would not be a good comparative statistic.) The University of Vermont has graphs of snow depths at Stowe through many seasons.

Last update: 2015 December 31
Ric Werme

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