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.
| 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 | ||||
| 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 |
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 |
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.)