Winter 2025-26

[Daniel Boone]

We've gotta get old fashioned sustained blocking back. If so, those averages will increase.

[IronTy]

1 minute ago, WinstonSalemArlington said:

Maybe, Doug Kammerer is right 

So are we gonna have an epic winter with big snows or is it gonna be cold, dry and windy?   That's the question.   

[IronTy]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

Are places south of us getting more snow, or did some location south of us simply get one snowstorm at some point that we missed and you got frustrated?  Because I am not finding these places south of us getting more snow.  

Average snowfall the last 10 years

BWI: 12.31"

DCA: 9.28"

Salisbury MD: 9.49"

Richmond VA: 6.66"

Raleigh NC: 3.16"

Charlotte NC: 1.88" 

When I look at last year's snowfall it seems pretty normal outside of the anomalous Gulf Coast snow.  Sure we got more snow in Calvert county than Baltimore but that was really just luck from one storm and it due to climate shift.  At least that's my take.  

[psuhoffman]

13 minutes ago, IronTy said:

When I look at last year's snowfall it seems pretty normal outside of the anomalous Gulf Coast snow.  Sure we got more snow in Calvert county than Baltimore but that was really just luck from one storm and it due to climate shift.  At least that's my take.  

That’s my take also. Using one cherry picked location (where a single fluke storm hit) from one season to say “its snowing more to the south” is flawed methodology.  If you pull back and use even a 10 year period or longer then it becomes apparent it is not in fact snowing more to our south. 

[psuhoffman]

1 hour ago, Maestrobjwa said:

South definitely got more that year. Remember the TX freeze and the snow that came with it?

One specific location getting more snow in one specific season is a fluke.  If you pull back and look over a 10/20/30 year period it is not snowing more to the south. One storm and one year is a fluke. An anomaly of short term randomness within the longer scale actual patterns. Same way 2010 was an anomaly for us, not some indication we get more snow than places in upstate NY that got less snow than Baltimore that one season.

[psuhoffman]

35 minutes ago, Daniel Boone said:

We've gotta get old fashioned sustained blocking back. If so, those averages will increase.

We are due for another negative cycle of the AO/NAO. However, don’t assume that fixes 100% of this. 

We had a very favorable long term cycle of the NHem long wave pattern from 2001-2016 and the sad fact was the mid Atlantic only has “average” snowfall during that period. NYC and Boston were setting all kinds of snowfall records though!   This period was very similar to the pattern of 1958-1971 but the positive snowfall anomalies shifted further north and we were south of most of the snow. 
 

Similarly we were due for another god awful period with an unfavorable PDO/AO coinciding, but just like the last favorable cycle didn’t produce as much snow as previous ones, this bad cycle is producing even less snow than previous ones. 
 

So yes we will get a better period sometime with a run of a more favorable PDO and AO and it will snow more than it has the last 10 years. But don’t expect it to suddenly go back to what the results were in the 1960s or even what they were in the 2000-2016 period. The downward degradation of our snowfall will continue with shorter term highs and lows within the longer scale trend. 
 

Below was our mean Dec-Feb h5 from 2001-2016 and yet all we got from this was near mean snowfall. We should have been way above avg snow (like NYC and Boston were) with this pattern. 

[Maestrobjwa]

22 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

One specific location getting more snow in one specific season is a fluke.  If you pull back and look over a 10/20/30 year period it is not snowing more to the south. One storm and one year is a fluke. An anomaly of short term randomness within the longer scale actual patterns. Same way 2010 was an anomaly for us, not some indication we get more snow than places in upstate NY that got less snow than Baltimore that one season.

I must be misrembering then. I just know southern half has done better than the northern half of our sub since Dec 2018.. It's not one season but multiple ones since then. Precip boundary has been consistently south of here, hasn't it? NoVa has done better as well...but I could be wrong.

[Maestrobjwa]

41 minutes ago, IronTy said:

When I look at last year's snowfall it seems pretty normal outside of the anomalous Gulf Coast snow.  Sure we got more snow in Calvert county than Baltimore but that was really just luck from one storm and it due to climate shift.  At least that's my take.  

How do I get that map from 2018 through now? That's the time period I really wanna see.

[psuhoffman]

2 hours ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Oh no it wasn't just one. I'd love to look at the year by year for that. Wouldn't those averages be skewed by the mediocre years? And It's been several times in different areas. I can think of at least 6 years of the last 10 where places south got more. NC in Dec 2018, TX in February 2021, Snow in NO last year. 2019 southern MD getting more from that storm, and again last year--snow events in Alabama! Beach blizzard in...2018 I THINK.

What I'm saying is the years that haven't been complete ratters, the south seems to be getting more. And you'd think it would happen less but the amounts have been consistently higher south of Baltimore since 2018 aside from years everybody failed.

But you picked 3 different locations where in one season they got more snow than Baltimore. One year. Over a longer period (10 years or more) none of those locations had more snow than Baltimore. That isn’t how climate works. One storm in one season is a fluke. If New Orleans got more snow over a 10 year or 30 year period then we can have this conversation. 

[psuhoffman]

1 minute ago, Maestrobjwa said:

How do I get that map from 2018 through now? That's the time period I really wanna see.

I don’t know how to get that map but I could run the numbers. Give me some cities and I will tell you what their average is v Baltimore over that period. 2018-2025 

[psuhoffman]

@Maestrobjwa

I think you’re not getting what I’m saying. One anomalous result in one season at one location is not indicative of a climate shift. It’s just a fluke. 
 

Look at 2010.  Baltimore got 32” more snow than Albany NY that year. Was that some indication the climate had shifted and Baltimore was snowier than Albany or was it just a one year fluke anomaly?  

[Daniel Boone]

13 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

We are due for another negative cycle of the AO/NAO. However, don’t assume that fixes 100% of this. 

We had a very favorable long term cycle of the NHem long wave pattern from 2001-2016 and the sad fact was the mid Atlantic only has “average” snowfall during that period. NYC and Boston were setting all kinds of snowfall records though!   This period was very similar to the pattern of 1958-1971 but the positive snowfall anomalies shifted further north and we were south of most of the snow. 
 

Similarly we were due for another god awful period with an unfavorable PDO/AO coinciding, but just like the last favorable cycle didn’t produce as much snow as previous ones, this bad cycle is producing even less snow than previous ones. 
 

So yes we will get a better period sometime with a run of a more favorable PDO and AO and it will snow more than it has the last 10 years. But don’t expect it to suddenly go back to what the results were in the 1960s or even what they were in the 2000-2016 period. The downward degradation of our snowfall will continue with shorter term highs and lows within the longer scale trend. 
 

Below was our mean Dec-Feb h5 from 2001-2016 and yet all we got from this was near mean snowfall. We should have been way above avg snow (like NYC and Boston were) with this pattern. 

I didn't say I expected it to get back to '60's Era. I said the recent averages would increase. Obviously overal warming has taken place, whether Cyclical , environmental or otherwise. I definitely don't believe it's all Greenhouse gasses. I'm not a practicing Met now but, still do some research and still look back on my working days and yes there's been a gradual warming but, we're still getting Snow way South. So, a banner Year in the MA is still very possible.

[MN Transplant]

1 hour ago, Maestrobjwa said:

How do I get that map from 2018 through now? That's the time period I really wanna see.

I picked out some CoCoRaHS points for winter 2018/19 to present:

Northern St. Mary's Co. - 53.0"

Mid Calvert Co. - 54.8"

Southern Anne Arundel - 45.5"

Near Salisbury - 46.7"

 

For comparison:

Falls Church, VA - 76.3" (my house)

DCA - 59.4"

BWI - 69.6"

IAD - 84.8"

[MN Transplant]

The CoCoRahs website lets you do 90-day custom maps.  I set it for Dec 15 - Mar 15, because that is a pretty good sense of climo.  Any storms outside of that window would be missed in my analysis.  The favored regions each winter were:

2024/25 - South and east

2023/24 - Central (MoCo through Baltimore)

2022/23 - Everyone lost

2021/22 - Fairly uniform, south a bit better than north

2020/21 - North had a dominant advantage

2019/20 - Another dead-ratter.  Better north, but we're talking 4-6" vs 0-2".

2018/19 - North and central much better.  Hwy 50 as a dividing line

2017/18 - Best in the north and east.  Another sub-10" dud for most.

2016/17 - Marginally better north, yet another sub-10" year for most.

2015/16 - Almost everyone got to party!  MoCo with some of the biggest totals.

 

So, obviously it is better to be north over the long run and they had a nice advantage in the 5 winters post the 2016 blizzard.  Since then, they have been worse versus climo than central or south.

[psuhoffman]

We all suffer from a perception bias where we notice when someone gets anomalous weather but not all the times “nothing” is happening.