Do you have a recollection of the winters of 1960-61 and 1966-67 by any chance? Those are two winters that have always fascinated me by looking at the stats.
In addition to December 2015, I think March 2012 should definitely be a contender for the most absurd blowtorch of a month on a grand scale, even though the most absurd departures were in the Midwest.
Where exactly is this historic warmth that I keep hearing about in the main thread? It looks as though one or two days may reach 50 in the next week or so, but that isn't really comparable to March 2012 or December 2015 in terms of anomalies. It is early though.
A lot of those 80s winters were actually pretty cold as well, namely 80-81, 81-82, 83-84, January 1985 and 85-86. Some of the arctic outbreaks during those years were historic, in fact. Yet snowfall was consistently poor to mediocre regardless.
I was 7 years old during the winter of 2000-01, and have a vague recollection of blizzard conditions during a certain storm. It was either 12/30/00, or 2/5/01. The former had a very sharp cutoff just to my west.
Was under a winter storm warning for 8-12.” The end result was ~2.” I’m actually in remarkably good spirits considering the fail. It could be because I was never that enthusiastic about this storm to begin with.
This hasn't been that impressive even in Northern Warren County, NJ. I've never been a fan of these types of systems. I would much rather have either a Miller A event or even an overrunning/SWFE with mixing, where at least a substantial amount of QPF is likely. I don't know the reasoning as to why models tend to overdo precipitation amounts on the south and west side of Miller B type storms, even if this current storm doesn't technically meet that classification.
I would love to see a snowfall distribution like the March 1960 storm. Huge area of 10"+ from Central Pa to Eastern LI and up into SNE. Also a decent storm in the Mid Atlantic. We also had January - like temperatures during the first few weeks of the month, with highs generally around freezing or below. That was a pretty huge anomaly.
In the midst of today's rain, I noticed that ABE hasn't had a daily negative temperature departure of even -8 or greater since May 13! We're definitely overdue for an unseasonably colder air mass.