February 2013 finished near normal for temperature (mean 16.4*F, normal 16.1*F) and slightly above normal for snowfall (27.1 inches, normal 22.2 inches) at the Indian Lake Dam. The final days of February featured a storm that produced significant (6-12+ inch) snowfall for the south/central and eastern Adirondacks. It wasn’t the spectacular finish I was anticipating, but it added more snow to the pile.
Meteorological winter is defined as December-January-February. Here’s the comparison between last winter and this winter (D-J-F):
2011-12: 51.3 inches
2012-13: 76.0 inches
Quoting the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Despite the OPINION of many that this winter was the same as last winter, the FACTS state otherwise. Over the heart of the Adirondacks, this winter was 2 feet “snowier” than last winter. If it weren’t for two game-wrecking January Thaws, this could have been a really solid winter. Adirondack business owners have told me this winter has been “much better” than last winter. Who am I to argue against that? 🙂
Coming up next week:
The middle of next week is likely to produce a major to perhaps historic snowfall for the mid-Atlantic coastal region. At this point, I have very little hope this storm will “shift north” and sock us with heavy snow:
The big problem here is the storm (X1) crashing into the northwestern United States. That will kick the mid-Atlantic coastal storm (X2) out to sea under the massive eastern Canadian block. In order to have any hope of having X2 make a run at us, we need a strong ridge to get pumped up over the western United States, which clearly won’t be the case this time.
After next week, the blocking high over eastern Canada will begin to break down, meaning that we have missed the opportunity for a true game-changing snowstorm that seemed possible for late February or early March. In the end, this pattern added nicely to the snow pile in places that already had meaningful snow cover but lacked the grand slam. Over the south/central Adirondacks, snow pack presently averages 16-24 inches around Indian Lake and Speculator, with 2-3+ feet in the “snow bowls” west of Route 30. That’s a decent starting point for March.
What’s next for March?
March is the ultimate wild card month. We can either have tons of cold and snow, like March 2001. Or we can be basically done with winter well before the spring equinox, like March 2012. The average snowfall for March at the Indian Lake Dam is 22.9 inches. But few March’s are actually clustered near that number, as you see by my snow climo stats at the end of my weather page. There is a ton of variability.
With the east Canadian blocking pattern breaking down, I don’t yet anticipate a robust, snowy March. But as long as the Arctic Oscillation remains in its negative phase, I can’t rule out another snowy and cold period sometime mid to later March. Put in other words, I don’t see anything that indicates the extremely early demise of the winter snow pack over the central Adirondacks that we saw last year:
Rich Lupia @ Upstatesnow.com has a pretty good write-up about March weather on his blog, so check that out!
As always, we’ll see what happens.
Darrin @ ilsnow.com
