What Is Your Favorite Type of Snowstorm?

[jonjon]

I love clippers!  Very dependable out this way for a foot, and they don't have to track perfectly.  Nice fluffy snow, too.

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

Cool...interesting thread!  I know some people don't care for these kinds of discussions but I do enjoy the occasional looking back at various events and what people liked about one storm or another.

For me, personally...tough call on whether I prefer one type of storm over another.  I guess to be simple about it, anything that has a heavy fall of snow with very low visibility...kind of obvious, I know!  I don't much care if it's windy or if it's perfectly calm, as long as it's puking and NAM-ing snow on us!   There's something just plain awesome about being out during conditions like that, how quiet it can be, and how much the night is lit up by snow on the ground.  Perhaps, when I think about it more, I might prefer storms that have at least some wind at some point with drifting.  Blizzards are cool from the rarity aspect and from the standpoint that they imply a level of extra danger or severity.  The storm this past January and the one on Feb. 9-10 were true blizzards over a broad area here, in terms of cold and wind...and snow.

I couldn't really pick out a "favorite" storm since I've lived in this area...the 3 big ones in 2009-10, Feb. 2003, Jan. 2016 of course are up there as the top 5 in the time I've been in the DC metro area.  However, considering a time period rather than one storm, I'd again say that Jan. 30 through Feb. 10, 2010 was the most incredible 12-day period of winter weather I've experienced.  It included four winter storm warning criteria events, two of which were HECS-level.

Below is a photo I took during the Feb. 9-10, 2010 storm, on the morning of the 10th.  I've posted it before, but it's perhaps my favorite photo of that entire winter, somehow encapsulating that season for me.  The perspective is looking down my street, with large flakes pounding down in the high winds.  The cars, still trapped after Snowmageddon just a few days earlier, seem to be almost groaning under the weight of yet more snow.  I "only" measured 12" from that storm (very hard to measure accurately!), but as I said above it was a true blizzard with the winds and cold (we had 40+ MPH gusts, temperatures were in the low-mid 20s all day).  I'll admit the night before I was a bit nervous (though not cliff-jumping!) that we might wake up to a bust, after I got about 2" followed by some light freezing rain and sleet.  I woke up instead to a whiteout.