Snow Depth Days
of the Northeast: 2023-2024

The season in review

The first snows in New England lowish lands started with a couple of wet snow events in November. The 3.7" I had on the ground on the 22nd had been reduced by rain following the snowfall. By the time I went out to run the snowblower, the bottom half was mostly slush.

While December brought a little first snow to southern MA, the rest of us saw less snow than in November. However, we did see a lot of rain - Concord's December 6.93" (all rain) is the fifth highest in its records. It was also the third warmest December, 6+° above average and warmest year.

January finally brought a respectable amount of snow to Sutton. Unfortunately the snow was not at all respectable. The only decent snowstorm was on the 7th-8th and about 10" of fluff. The rest were either nuisance snowfalls, most had mixed precip, and some events were all rain. At the end of the month I could still see the pattern left by 2.36" of mostly rain on the 9th-10th. If that had all been snow....

February had a lot less rain (maybe none). It also had a lot less snow. And no sub-zero temperatures so it's unlikely there will be one this season! [And there was none.]

At the beginning of March it was looking like we'd be in for a very low snow season in NH. However, despite the warm months, we matched the pattern I've seen where winters that start late seem to be reluctant to end. In Sutton, four snow events in March brought two feet of snow, and the last storm in the last week of the month was nearly double the size of every other storm this season.

And another foot+ snow storm came to Sutton in early April and may have marked the end of the snowfall for the season. Fortunately it melted quickly and had no impact on my day trip to Vermont for the "Great American Total Solar Eclipse". The difference between 90% and 99% "coverage" is remarkable, the difference between 99% and totality is indescribable.

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 0.4 0 6 10 6.6 30 0 0 0 0
Pepperell MA 2 0 0.4 0 30.7 103 2.4 34 1.5 2 5 9
Bow NH 4.3 8 1 0.5 30.2 126 4 221 7.8 33 14.4 31
Bristol NH 6.9 10.5 4.6 21 25.3 220.5 3.1 133.5 26.3 72 13.1 26
Sutton Mills NH 5.3 9 2.8 9 26.3 176 2.8 110 24 67.5 14.4 30

2023-2024 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 13 40 3.1
Pepperell MA 42 148 3.5
Bow NH 61.7 419.5 6.8
Bristol NH 79.3 483.5 6.1
Sutton Mills NH 75.6 401.5 5.3

Contributors

The CoCoRaHS column is the "station number" registered at Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network, an organization founded to create a much denser network of precipitation data than the National Weather Service entities can provide. One of these years I might look into downloading CoCoRaHS data each month and add that data here.

Name Location CoCoRaHS
Dennis Bollea Fairhaven MA  
Steve Gunn Bristol NH NH-GR-1
Jim Hilt Bow NH NH-MR-4
Paul Venditti Pepperell MA  
Ric Werme Sutton Mills NH NH-MR-63

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 consistently. (And if only one area reports depth days, it would not be a good comparative statistic.)

Last update: 2024 May 5
Ric Werme

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