tamarack

We lived in Gardiner in 1995 and the afternoon high was 16 with winds gusting to near 50, but it was 31 at my 9 PM obs time the evening before, probably the 2d worst "midnight spoil" max I can recall. Worst was March 6, 2007, when the afternoon high of -2 was wrecked by the 19 at 9 the previous evening. March 2017 had one that ranks with 4/95, 14° at 9 PM on 3/10 followed by a zero for afternoon high. Co-ops with 7 AM obs time have preserved those cold afternoons. (1st CT Lake had a high of -24 on Dec 26, 1980 thanks to the 7 AM protocol. Mt Mansfield has tied that mark and MWN has numerous colder ones, but nothing in New England below 3000' asl can match it.)

Farther north, we've had only 10 days in 27 Aprils with maxima 32 or colder, only 3 below 30 and the 24 during a modest snowfall on 5/2003 is lowest by 5°. 200 miles NNE in Fort Kent, such maxima are much more common, 3.1/yr vs. 0.37/yr. Of course, the 1970s-80s were also colder than 1999 onward. We recorded 31 such days in our 10 Aprils there, 30 of which were 23 to 32, plus the 17 max for the 4/7/82 blizzard.

For sure. Feb precip up to 0.76" with yesterday's 0.02" and not much in the near future - maybe a few pennies late Saturday. Driest of our first 27 Februarys is 0.95" in 2024, but DJ & M that winter totaled 23.49". DJ this winter: 6.08". I doubt that March will bring 17.4" (precip, not snowfall ) to match 23-24. Would be exciting, though.

Strange, but 2009-10 takes the cake - CAR 70.3", BWI 78". That's probably a one-in 200-year phenomenon.

Beat me once more - only 0.8" here, 40:1 from little feathers.

Couple of cherrypicked comments, last addressed first: I thought the OV blizzard had pressure down close to 950 mb, the lowest on record for a non-tropical storm in the eastern US. 957 would tie CAR's mark in the 2/2/76 southeast gale. 1978 appears to have a significantly larger footprint. PHL had 14.1" and NYC 17.7", in the same range as 2/26 though some NNJ points did get a lot more in 2026. To the north, the Farmington (Maine) co-op recorded 22.0" from the 1978 storm. That co-op ended reports in 2022 but a cocorahs observer had 0.5" in the recent blizzard and my site 6 miles to the east of there had only 0.2".

Different obs time? Data from CLIMOD: 26: 31 25 2.36" 26.1" 4" 27: 35 29 0.04" 0.3" 26" From the above report: 26: 31 25 0.26" 3.7" 4" 27: 35 29 2.14" 22.1" 26" Same temps, same LE, same depth readings (nearest inch) 24-30; 2/2/4/26/25/24/23. IIRC, NYC was (and still is) using noon for depth measurement. I wonder if the coop reported precip/snowfall at noon as well. Would make sense for a mid-morning start, also one newspaper article I read years ago stated that the snowfall ended shortly after midnight on 12/27.

After seeing a huge wolf spider outside her house, our arachnophobe neighbor said that if she ever saw one of those IN her house, she'd light the place afire as she ran out the front door.

The only other time I can recall when snow caused a full week's closure - Feb 1961 in NYC. The storm came Friday evening into Saturday, but with the piles left from Jan 19-20 and a couple small events (plus temps never reaching 30 between the 2 big storms), schools were closed Feb 6-10.

We're up to 26 events of 0.1" to 3", totaling 23.5" (assumes 1.0" today). The other 5 events totaled 45.4". Edit: Snow is done, only 0.8" so the 26 midgets total only 23.3". That 0.8" had just 0.02" LE, for 40:1 ratio. The final "flakes" included 6-pointed disks, shaped kind of like a starfish.

O Boy! Yet another one misses to the south. Looking more like 2002-03 here, which was very cold (DJF temp 2nd only to 14-15), nearly 2 feet BN snowfall and only one storm greater than 7.5". Like this season, the biggest event by far was in January.

Snow didn't show up until 9:30 and it's petering out now. Forecast was 1-3 and we might reach the 1, and that only because it's air-filled fluff. 2024 set the driest February with 0.95", but this month will break it - had 0.74" thru yesterday and won't reach 0.05" today. On the bright side, Feb '24 brought only 3.7" snow while we're a bit over 12" this month and snow total at 98% of YTD average. Edit: 108% of the average.

Andover, Maine - Feb. 2017 7 19 10 0.03 1.0 34 8 13 9 1.15 6.0 39 9 42 11 0 0 39 10 42 -2 0.20 6.0 44 11 10 -5 T T 44 12 11 0 0.19 6.5 50 13 19 11 0.90 14.0 62 14 22 13 0.15 2.5 64 15 25 7 0.03 1.5 65 16 27 13 0.95 14.0 79 17 26 18 T T 76 He saw those monster depths and went searching, in vain. Unfortunately, he didn't understand snow plowing in Maine, where they don't just clear the road but push back the banks to be ready for the next storm. He made a left turn in Andover and headed up the East B Road, quickly ran out of houses and then out of phone reception as he was behind the Baldpates, and with lowering gas and not knowing where he was . . . When back in RI he posted a withering critique of Maine, its roads, its snow, its reporting, etc. My snarky response suggested that his G-P-S should have been augmented by an M-A-P.

It will never be changed, and I don't know the measuring protocol in 1947, but I think that year's storm was the biggest. It's based mostly on pack increase/persistence. 2006's pack never topped 17", 2016 boosted pack from zero to 22" (and had similar LE as '47) while 1947 lifted pack from 2" to 26" (NYC's tallest) and was still at 24" two days later. (And of course, 1888 is somewhat a guess as the flakes were flying horizontally.)

Or a wind-scoured valley, like our stake in the April 1982 blizzard at Fort Kent. 4/6: 24 0 T T 27" 4/7: 17 10 1.10" 15.0" 26" Wind NW 35G60, vis near zero 4/8: 23 13 0.14" 2.0" 25" Wind NW 20G40 I doubt there was much melting, but 15-20 feet either side of the stake there were 6-foot drifts.