tamarack

I've seen 2 such >22" events in 22 winters here, 12/03 and 2/09, and have to go back to 1984 (in Fort Kent) to find another one. Unless you're at Stowe or Jay Peak, or in prime LES country, that kind of dump isn't coming every winter.

"Relatively" being the operative term, as 22.4" (Philly's 4th biggest) isn't too shabby.

Full whiff up here from Jan '16. My 1st (of 3 lifetime) thundersnow came 12/24/1966. I learned 2 things that day as I was out hunting in NNJ - first, that 345 KV powerlines are hot (temp-wise) as I could hear flakes "popping" as I walked the edge of the R-O-W. 2nd one took 2 booms to convince me, as #1 merely confused - "It can't thunder during snow, can it?" After the 2nd and louder one my thought was "This is going to be something special." By then we had SN+ and 4-5" new, and the storm finished about 15".

2" in the foothills. That season had no snows greater than 3.4" thru Feb 9, then 21" with some thunder on 10-11 plus 5 more storms for another 39" thru March 12.

I've read and heard from more reliable sources that arson is suspected in a number of the Australian wildfires. That doesn't change the fact that abnormally hot and dry weather (at a time when climo is already hot and dry) is making those fires far more catastrophic than they would be with normal weather, and far harsher to those trying to control the fires.

Hard to choose here in the foothills. Using calendar years (mostly), 2000-09 averaged 92.4" while 2010-19 had 91.6" with perhaps a bit to be added in the next 8 days, though not the 8" it would take to match 00-09. --00-09 and 10-19 each had 4 years with 100"+, though curiously the 10 seasons 99-00 thru 08-09 had only 3 while 09-10 thru 18-19 did it 6 times. Advantage 10-19. --My top 3 calendar years are 2007, 2008, and 2001 in that order. (Seasons: It's 07-08, 00-01 and 16-17 in that order.) Advantage 00-09. --My 2 largest snowfalls came 12/6-7/03 and 2/22-23/09. Of the top 10, 6 came 00-09, top 20 had 12 in 00-09. Advantage 00-09 --00-09 (actually 99-00 thru 08-09) had 2 ratters, 3 meh winters, 5 good ones including the two snowiest. 09-10 thru 18-19 had 3 ratters, one meh, and 6 good winters. Advantage 10-19. For extreme events, it's 00-09. For consistency, it's 10-19. For snowpack, 10-19 leads in days with 1" to 29" while 00-09 is ahead for 30"+ and for average of winter's deepest, 31" to 30". Call it a draw.

I think that 55 was across the river in Troy though ALB must have been similar, and Saratoga was in the same general range. Hudson and lower CT River valleys took the brunt. IMO, that storm's combo of snow, wind and cold is unmatched in records for the Northeast. Have you seen "Blizzard! The great storm of '88" by Judd Caplovich? Lots of info, maps drawn by Kocin, scads of old pics. Only Maine data I've found is for Gardiner, 6 miles south of Augusta, which recorded 8": of paste on a day with a low of 32 - they were too far east for the good stuff. ASH isn't all that far away and they got about 30".

Batted .500 on the March quartet, only a trace (and wind) from#1 and nada from #4, but 36.4" total from 2&3. We take - made for my 2nd snowiest March here, though 18" behind 2001. Of course, the might-have-beens were strong; going 4-for-4 might have eclipsed Feb. '69 for snowiest month in the foothills - needed about 30" more. The 2 March hits, the best 12/25 storm of my experience and the Aroostook cold either side of NYD - all great stuff. (Less fun was 2 January days in hospital after a serious A-fib event, though things have gone okay since.)

New Year's Eve 1962, by far the coldest WCI I experienced before moving to northern Maine. NYC temp was 13/4 while my NNJ home had 5/-8, and winds that tipped large bare-limbed oaks out of semi-frozen soil, smashed windows and nearly tore the 10-12" ice from a nearby reservoir, piling about 20 ft worth of it on the lee shore. Along with the 1950 Apps gale, the strongest winds I've ever felt. It was the backside NW-ies of a monster storm for the BGR region. I was hoping Tex (whom I always watched if at all possible) would have some memorable comment on that day's wx but he'd had too much New Year's Eve cheer to be coherent.

After 16" on 3/22-23 and 19" eight days later, there was 48" at my stake on 3/31/2001, for the date taller even than any Fort Kent winters, by 2" over 1984. And a monster storm was progged for the next day and night - track shifted east and buried Newfoundland, big snow and gusts to 150 kph.

Kind of like my seeing catspaws on the windshield in late August at 1,000' elevation in Fort Kent. Not all that wintry, but slushy drops during that month are noteworthy.

Thanks. And I also thank you and Will for related follow-up comments. As one who has worked as a forester since 1976 I'm always interested in things related to my vocation.

Was forest management (especially fuel management or lack of same), considered by this study as a possible contributing factor for the massive increase in burn area? Perhaps it's not a major factor, but I hope it was part of the data that was used. (Would read the link but I'm headed home.)

However, on 9/30/91 locations from PQI and points north recorded 2-5". Ironic, because 5 years earlier (9/30/86) brought the largest convective-caused blowdown I've seen in my 46 years in Maine, 600 acres in T16R6 and T16R5, ending by tossing spruce into the NW end of Square Lake. (The Telos blowdown in October of either 1979 or 1980 was 3,000 acres of flattened spruce that from the air looked like an August oat field squashed by a thunderstorm. However, that was a synoptic system, SE gale.) sadly no older folks mentioned the desert dry of '65 Driest year on record for 6 states - DE, PA, NJ, CT, RI, MA. Skipped NY because of a drier year in the less wet western counties, but NYC's 26.09" in 1965 is nearly 7" less than their #2 driest, which was the year before. 1963 comes in at 4th driest but only a 4" RA in early November kept them from the #2 slot. And 1966 was running only 0.7" less dry than '65 thru August. ('66 remains NYC's driest met summer and is 2nd only to 2010 for hottest.) Then 9/21/66 recorded 5.54" and the drought was broken, though only the following months' being near/above norms confirmed the end. Wx trivia: Some locales in western VA got more RA in 5 hours from Camille's remnants than NYC had for all of 1965.

Had 15.8" in Gardiner, 3rd biggest of my 13 winters there. #1 came 11 week earlier, 17.5" on Dec 20-21. My top 5/top 10 entries that come from my Gardiner time don't involve snow. (Other than its contribution to the 1987 flood)

Not just the southern (assuming that means MA and perhaps SNE) but NNE as well. Farmington co-op reached 40" depth on Jan. 13 despite whiffing on the blizz. Then 3 torch-deluges (totaled 4" RA at temps 47-53) crushed the pack down to 8", by far the co-op's greatest January loss of snowpack. Feb. snows brought the depth to 21" before late month thaws pushed it back to 7", then a cold snowy week-plus in March grew the pack to 23". Two weeks later it was gone, just traces, and the 20" of April snow lasted but a day or two. 11/23/89 4" of snow at my parents house in Bayside. I drove to my friends house in Dix Hills for Thanksgiving dinner and right into the storm. Near zero visibility and heavy snow. My car nearly went off the road. Only flurries that day south of Augusta, though I tagged a deer that morning. Much preferred the thunderblizzard two days earlier, which ushered in nearly 6 weeks of continuous BN temps with several 10-11" snowfalls.. Extremely late snowfall in May of 1996. Snow on 5/12/96 in New York State and Vermont. Co-worker living at 1200' in Frenchville had 36 hours of continuous snowfall that weekend, top depth reaching 12". 30 miles SE and almost 600' lower, CAR recorded 5.7".

While some grass was showing then, I'd guess the "green" was leftovers from autumn, not spring green-up. Probably lots of piles still around as you drove by. Farmington co-op, located along Rt 4/27 about 1.5 miles north of town center, had 7" depth on 4/17 and only a trace on the 18th, despite that day's 37/36 temp and only 0.25" RA. To me, that's far too little RA/warmth to eat 7" of snow, even ripe 2:1 stuff. At my pack-holding location, 4/17 had 15" (at my 9 PM obs time - don't know when the co-op measures) and then decreased 2-3" per day to reach "trace" on 4/23. Had 3" the evening before.

That mid-April event dropped 5" snow at my place and 5" cold rain. Hope I never see another such pair of 5s. Sugarloaf summit probably got 4-5 feet, maybe more. Brought the month up to 37.2", and the 36.1" at the Farmington co-op was 12" above its next snowiest April since 1893. My #2 April here is 15.6" in 2011, and even my Fort Kent records top out at 29" in 1982.

April and May were nice, but JFM had way BN sun, 140% of avg precip and 60% snowfall - no way to run a NNE winter. Were you around to see Olympia snow woman in Bethel? Only on TV.

Maine's #1 must be 2010, the winter eaten by the New Year's retro-bomb. #2 might be the 1998 super Nino. 2012 obliterated some daily records and featured the 3 warmest March maxima in Farmington's 125-year POR. However, 2010 "wins" because those months had almost no BN temps at all, until the 2nd week of May when all our apple blossoms got freeze-killed, along with ash, birch and some maple shoots.

Some NNJ memories triggered by 4,5,6: 4. Our scout troop (I was asst. scoutmaster) got caught at Allamuchy Scout Reservation that Sunday morning, and we had an interesting (but safe) 35 mile drive home. My '62 Beetle had no problem at all. 5. Had a high of about 4° that day with a stiff breeze. We were framing a new house, usually a well-warming exercise, but we were hard put to keep hands and feet fully operational. (Not as uncomfortable as 5 years earlier, 12/31/62, when the same 4° max was accompanied by gusts well into the 60s - speed estimated, but backed up by all the damage.) 6. 18" at low teens overnight, starting to taper off as we headed into the woods for the deer season opener. My dad dropped a nice little buck a couple hundred yards from the house while my friend and I saw nothing while slogging a mile or so thru the powder. Dad gave me a knife and showed me how to field dress a deer - came in handy 8 years later when I took my 1st deer, with no one else nearby.

Welcome to the board. I lurked for a year or more before joining, back in the Eastern days. Having spent Thanksgiving week in the Olympia area in both 1995 and '96, my impression for RA there was "some every day" - the November joke is that it only rains once that month, lasting 1st to 30th. However, in those 2 weeks there were only 2 all-day rains, and w/o a gauge I'd estimate neither reached 2". IIRC, Seattle averages a bit under 40"/year and Olympia probably isn't much different, with Port Angeles (closer to Olympics' rain shadow) about 10" less. Without checking stats, I'd guess your current area has big rain events - 3"/4"+ in 24 hours - more often than the communities on the inner part of Puget Sound.

Not New England, but some from my former life in NNJ - chronological, not prioritized: Nov. 1950 Apps Gale - my 1st wx memory. Watched trees thrashing until tops began falling, at which point dad thought it wise to go inside. Jan. 1953 Ice Storm - 45 years (to the day) prior to #1, above. 6 days w/o power, probably piqued my interest both in wx and trees. March 1956 - 24" dump, my first big snowstorm. Feb. 1961 - 24" or more atop a 25"+ pack, greatest depth in NJ records. NYC's strongest Feb wind. New Year's Eve 1962 - Winds gusting probably to 70 (uprooted huge bare-limbed oaks) with temp 5/-8, vies with 11/50 for strongest winds I've seen. Backside winds from the storm that ate BGR. Jan. 1966 - Baltimore blizzard, 15-18" pow at mid teens, winds gusting 50s, some side streets remained impassible a week later. Aug. 1971 - PRE plus TS Doria, 8.9" RA in about 20 hours. Top winds about same as Hazel, Bob (gusts approaching 60)

Ice storm: December 2008. About an inch and a half of ice at 31F. Amazing event. Most people posting on here were on the forums for this one so they've seen all the pics and such even if they didn't directly experience it. Can't match January 1998 up in NNE but basically no ice storm can. Comparing just worst-to-worst, they may have been close (though the "Godzilla effect" high tension towers in Quebec are indeed unmatched.) But 1998 tore things apart from Montreal to Machias - can't recall another ice storm that covered nearly that much area.

Probably peaked about 10' above MHW, though I've not read anything official. That SSE wind was trying to push all of Penobscot Bay up the river. Of the 200 or so cars flooded (and totaled - BGR temp dropped from 57 to 1 that afternoon/eve), only a single car had been occupied. The woman climbed onto the roof (BDN had a dramatic pic) and a fellow swam out and made the rescue. Just like Hollywood, they got married about 6 months later. (AKAIK, they were strangers at the time of the flood.) We'd had a lesser thaw (43F, 0.20" RA) just 6 days earlier which froze up many culverts, so the ice holes on roads were challenging. Heard news that one in Baker Brook, NB, about 7 miles from Ft. Kent, was deep enough to snare a log truck. That 1st year in FK had as much wx drama as any 2 other years: 1/1: Moved to FK. 1/12: -41, welcome to the St. John Valley. (9th-13th avg minima -34) 2/2: Groundhog gale. 5/7: 1.5" snow in 45 minutes as I tilled the garden. 8/10: 6" RA from the remains of Belle, nearly washed away neighbor's house, ruins our garden. Backyard looked like river bottom stones/gravel. 11/14: (not exactly weather, but snow OG helped) 1st Maine deer. Lo-o-o-ng drag 12/26-30: 36" in 2 storms, 2nd of which accompanied the last 370 miles driving home from family Christmas in NJ. CAR going from +1C to -8C in one hour I impressive on the '76 cold front. My 5-hr drop from +7C to -21C blows away any other CF of my experience.