Winter waning, Feb 19 Recap

Well, for all of you snow haters, this is your favorite time of the year. It's February 25th and yesterday CP reached a high of 53 so you are probably thinking winter is over. Well let's not get too excited here folks. Let's not forget that accumulating snow into early April is not that uncommon for NYC. In fact just 3 years ago on April 2, 2018, a storm dumped 5" on the big apple. And this AM NY story recapped the 7 biggest snowstorms in NYC April history. The largest of course was the Easter Sunday Blizzard in 1915 when 10.5 inches of snow fell, according to the NWS. Philly got 19" from that storm!

@NWSNewYork in Central Park reported 4.4" for the last storm which brought the February total for the month to date up to 26.0". If you were wondering, the seasonal total at CPK is now 38.6" which makes this the 39th snowiest winter in history since the NWS began recordkeeping in January 1868. For you stats nerds out there like me, this is a 74% percentile winter assuming we don't get any more snow from here on out. And if you look at the last 10 years (since climate change has started really warming the planet), it provides better context. You need to go back 7 years to the 57" in 2013-14 for more snow. 

And on that bright snowy note, let's recap the last storm. In Port Washington where I am we had a real nice hit of 3" that was falling fast with big, wet flakes coming down hard around 11:30am on the 18th. Then the snow machine just stopped and we had a wet mix of rain and snow in the early afternoon before it tapered off. The second round overnight and into the morning delivered another inch and half and it was difficult to measure given when it fell but my snow stick looked like 4 3/4" so I am going with a storm total of 4.8". 

I retweeted this terrific map from Nicholas Isabella (@NycStormChaster) which shows not only where a couple of better bands set up in central Jersey and the LHUD valley but also the cool "ocean affect" enhanced snow totals just north of Boston in SNE.