Saturday, March 13, 2010

Is it over?

First off, today marks the end of my consecutive snow cover. Since January 28th I have not seen my lawn until today making it a 45 streak (Jan 28th - Mar 13th). Here is the chart:

Impressive, but is it a record? Well, that will never be known since records like that have not been kept anywhere local except for Morristown which might as well be a different climate completely. I would compare this to the winter of 78' from what my parents told me, which means this was the worst overall winter in over 30 years when talking about the following statz:

The temps:
Days below freezing: 45 days
December average: 29.4 (-2.13 degrees)
January average: 25.8 (-0.68 degrees)
February average: 28.0 (-1.0 degrees)

The snow statz:
Days of snow cover: 85
Longest snow cover: 45 days
Season total snow: 78.9" (Average of last 7 winters is 53.7")
December snow: 22.25" (+14.95")
January snow: 6.00" (-8.00")
February snow: 48.9" (+40.9")
Deepest snow cover: 31.5"
Days of snowfall: 35


Ok, so it was an amazing winter. "Was" is past tense but will spring provide a shock to remind everyone to beware the ides of March? Right now all indices and models point to March 21st (the first day of spring) bringing winter back. It's way to far out right now, but the arctic oscillation which is currently positive will go back negative. If the cold comes back in at the right moment then local resorts may be skiing and riding into the Easter weekend, if they can survive the coming week and 5 inches of rain...