December seemed to have a snow event every few days. It had ten, one every few days. The first six had no more than an inch of snow but seemed to bring an early winter weariness with people being more interested than usual in getting past the earliest sunset and solstice. An early subzero morning mid-month of -7.5°F didn't help, but hey, I consider the winter a failure if we don't have at least one sub-zero low.
January was a classic January - a thaw in the middle and cold on both ends. My coldest morning was on the 4th, -11.2°F. There was more snow to the south, Woonsocket, RI and Fairhaven, MA reported the most to me. (Except for Mt. Mansfield, of course, but it had only a few more inches!) Between the 2nd and the 10th, there were three subzero lows and all the lows were below 2°F. After three more sub-zero lows on the 22nd-24th the thaw was a distant memory.
February had three major (>= 6.0 inch) snow storms and three minor storms. It was also cold, except for three days close to 50°F. 17 days failed to reach freezing, four days reached sub-zero temps. The last day of the month had the second coldest afternoon of the month, 22.1°F. The maximum snow depth, 30 inches, was exceeded only in two other seasons. Pretty much everyone is ready for spring or groundhog stew.
March had no major storms, though a wet 5 inch snowfall wasn't well appreciated. It was also cold, with four daily lows below zero and three days above 50°F. I.e. not that different from February. The high for the month was only 54°F, and that was on the 15th. The last four days of the month were the only ones with above freezing lows and they finally brought significant melting.
April started out with seasonable temperatures, and that was enough to melt the final 10 inches, leading to the end of continuous snow cover on the 6th.
The 15 subzero lows were the most in my 11 years of temperature records. the only other seasons with more than 9 were 2003/2004 (14, including 11 in January) and 2004/2005 (12).
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 | |
Collinsville CT | 0.3 | 0 | 16.2 | 38 | 11.4 | 51 | 29.7 | 354 | 0.4 | 173 | 0.9 | 1 | ||||
Fairhaven MA | 0.4 | 0 | 5.1 | 8 | 20 | 56 | 21.3 | 105 | 2.8 | 4 | ||||||
Marlboro MA | 17.1 | 87 | 17.4 | 103 | 34.5 | 321.5 | 1.6 | 143.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | ||||||
Pepperell MA | 0.2 | 0 | 23.5 | 157 | 17 | 173 | 37.4 | 406 | 2.1 | 283 | 0.2 | 0 | ||||
Poland Spring ME | 2.1 | 2 | 26.2 | 186 | 7.7 | 231 | 28.6 | 294 | 10.7 | 325 | 1.2 | 30 | ||||
Bow NH | 0.9 | 0 | 25 | 160 | 16.5 | 325 | 42.2 | 610 | 10.3 | 712 | 0.8 | 121 | ||||
Bristol NH | 5 | 6.3 | 22.8 | 140.4 | 16 | 383 | 31.8 | 550 | 18.4 | 561.7 | 0.4 | 44.4 | ||||
Penacook NH | 0.3 | 0 | 20.3 | 137 | 13.5 | 278 | 32.8 | 482 | 8.9 | 475 | 0.3 | 25.5 | ||||
Woonsocket RI | 10.6 | 35 | 20.5 | 54 | 27 | 244 | 1 | 51 | ||||||||
Mt. Mansfield VT | 11.3 | 48 | 35.5 | 276 | 23.9 | 588 | 23.4 | 873 | 29 | 1379 | 39.7 | 2294 | 7.4 | 2044 | 0 | 799 |
Location | Snowfall | Depth Days | Persistence Quotient |
---|---|---|---|
Collinsville CT | 58.9 | 617 | 10.5 |
Fairhaven MA | 49.6 | 173 | 3.5 |
Marlboro MA | 71.1 | 655.5 | 9.2 |
Pepperell MA | 80.4 | 1019 | 12.7 |
Poland Spring ME | 76.5 | 1068 | 14.0 |
Bow NH | 95.7 | 1928 | 20.1 |
Bristol NH | 94.4 | 1685.8 | 17.9 |
Penacook NH | 76.1 | 1397.5 | 18.4 |
Woonsocket RI | 59.1 | 384 | 6.5 |
Mt. Mansfield VT | 170.2 | 8301 | 48.8 |
Name | Location |
---|---|
Dennis Bollea | Fairhaven MA |
A Cadoret | Woonsocket RI |
Wayne Cotterly | Poland Spring ME |
Paul Hansen | Marlboro MA |
Jim Hilt | Bow NH |
Andrew Plona | Collinsville CT |
Paul Venditti | Pepperell MA |
Ric Werme | Penacook NH |
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.