One thing this winter made me realize is you don't need a certain number of *inches* of snow to get a winter feel. Remember folks, the South Pole station in Antarctica gets less than 1 inch of snow a year and it is one of the most wintry places on the planet!
So instead of measuring winters by snowfall inches, we should measure it by duration of snowcover and average temperatures. Whether it's 10 inches of snow or 50 inches of snow matters much less than 1) having many days below freezing 2) the lack of a thaw-- temperatures above 50 degrees 3) duration of snow cover 4) number of snowfall events. The actual amount of snowfall does not really matter.
It's felt like a long winter because it has been.