Grading Winter 2025-26

[Chrisrotary12]

32 minutes ago, 512high said:

You are correct.

And I appreciate you for measuring!!

[512high]

2 hours ago, Chrisrotary12 said:

And I appreciate you for measuring!!

Again, I do this for plowing basically, also keeps track for salt usage etc, after April 1st I have no desire! good luck with your golf season!

[tamarack]

On 3/11/2026 at 12:25 AM, The 4 Seasons said:

We'll see how the rest of Mar and Apr goes but it can't be lower than A- currently for many a reason. There's really no other winter i can think of overall better than this except for 95-96 and 10-11. Another 1-2 Mar/Apr adv or warning events and ill bump it up. 

Also no major busts, which is rare for any winter season. Most of our good or great ones had a couple.

It's a lot like 2000-2001 with better snow pack.

Strictly snowfall amounts yeah, but 04-05 was seriously back loaded. Probably 50-60% of our snow occurred from late feb to late mar that season. Each one melted right after it happened. And the "blizzard" sucked balls for most of CT..hours of light to mod snow that slowly piled up with no blizzard conditions.

02-03 was great but had many many teases and near busts like Dec 2002 christmas blizzard, Jan 2003. Also couldn't touch this season with snow pack. And we ended the season on a major Apr 7th bust. 02-03 was like 95-96 lite with wall to wall snow from Nov to Apr. 

Both those seasons were good-great but had plenty of problems, i think this winter is better overall, just my opinion. 

2000-01 had one of the best packs we've had here, especially late - 48" OG at my 9 PM obs time on March 31.  Even Fort Kent (avg winter 134" in our 10 years there) never entered April with that much.

2004-05 was back loaded here as well.  Thru the first week of February we'd not had a single event of 4"+, which is ridiculous for a locale that averages almost 90"/year.  Then we had 60" in the next 31 days, 2/10 thru 3/13, to finish at 94.3".

2002-03 has similarities with this winter:  lots of suppressed events, one big storm and little else of note, and cold.  That season had 13.8" on Jan 3-4 and nothing else greater than 7" (and that came in November), finishing more than 20" BN.  This winter it's 19.6" on Jan 25-27 and nothing else beyond 8.5", though that #2 event came on Christmas Eve and provided loads of fun for the grandkids.  Their previous Christmas visit, in 2023, failed to show them a single flake or snow pile until they were headed home on Dec 30.

 

[H2Otown_WX]

23 hours ago, The 4 Seasons said:

But when we are grading the winter its just for our area or town no? Who cares about the rest of the region E MA/N MA/RI etc...respectfully. I'm sure they'd say the same thing when grading their local area. So with that said, we did get a sig event in December 6-10" is a big deal and overall December was well above average with 12-16" around our areas. 

I think you meant Jan 05. Jan 2005 wasn't a bust per-se but it was a garbage blizzard overall for most of CT. If that happened today, people who consider the Blizzard of 2026 meh or a let down, would be absolutely be bridge jumping if that repeated. Leading up to the storm most models were dumping 2-3" of qpf over CT and most forecasts were for historic territory with 15-30" at the time. What happened was a long duration, light to moderate snowfall with zero verified blizzard conditions for CT, maybe GON? I dont think we ever got above moderate for snowfall. BDR reported -SN to SN the whole time. I remember the deepest drift i could find was about 18" with mostly ~8" in non drift areas. I dont know where the snow went or what happened but reports are all 12-16 around here. Either way, that was still way under what was expected. Same thing with Dec 2003, which was worse Check out the radar here its a joke compared to 2026. 

https://www.jdjweatherconsulting.com/jan-22-23-2005

https://www.jdjweatherconsulting.com/dec-5-7-2003

You said that 02-03 had many teases and busts and you cited the Christmas Blizzard which I agree sucked and then you said Jan 2003. I know January had a couple nice events. didn't think there were any busts though. Idk I thought January 2005 was decent for us but maybe not I must be thinking of December 2005. Both were better out east. Haha, yeah I knew December 2003 sucked but it does pique my long duration fetish. That's what sucked about missing out on January 2010. That could have been such an awesome long duration event if I was farther NE.

[H2Otown_WX]

I don't consider that December event right after Xmas to be a sig event. It was decent but I would classify it as moderate.

[tamarack]

21 hours ago, H2Otown_WX said:

You said that 02-03 had many teases and busts and you cited the Christmas Blizzard which I agree sucked and then you said Jan 2003. I know January had a couple nice events. didn't think there were any busts though. Idk I thought January 2005 was decent for us but maybe not I must be thinking of December 2005. Both were better out east. Haha, yeah I knew December 2003 sucked but it does pique my long duration fetish. That's what sucked about missing out on January 2010. That could have been such an awesome long duration event if I was farther NE.

The 2002 Christmas night storm was forecast 8-12" here and verified at 1".  Belgrade Village, less than 10 miles southeast, had 8", parts of AUG had 15" and GYX 18", their biggest on record until Feb 2013, still in 3rd place.