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.

[EastonSN+]

A- Easton CT.

52.7 inches.

I grade purely on snowfall, with A+ reserved for 60+. 

[The 4 Seasons]

On 3/12/2026 at 6:26 PM, H2Otown_WX said:

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.

really? that's a high bar. I think i got the significant wording from the benchmark that the NWS has used forever. 6+ = warning snowfall and the wording in the watches and warnings usually includes "significant". And before they switched to "light, moderate, heavy" accumulations in the zones it used to be "significant" for anything that would meet warning criteria. So i personally use moderate for advisory and significant for warning level or higher which that storm in Dec definitely was. It's all subjective and personal opinion though..

Yeah Jan 03 sucked here, there was a tight gradient in CT though. Similar to the christmas blizzard. 

Dec 03 and Jan 05 i lump into the same bucket of a long duration shredded radar mess. They were both pretty bad. Dec 05 was wild but still way better out east about 6-12 for most of CT

[codfishsnowman]

Looks lousy now but I still hold out hope for the end of the month into the first ten days of April. I am holding off until mid April to grade unless we are locked in to a summer like pattern which we will not be

I do think with the very cold maritime waters there should be no shortage of cloudy damp chilly days with afternoon temps perhaps only in the 30s in the hills to the low 40s in the valley

 

[H2Otown_WX]

14 hours ago, The 4 Seasons said:

really? that's a high bar. I think i got the significant wording from the benchmark that the NWS has used forever. 6+ = warning snowfall and the wording in the watches and warnings usually includes "significant". And before they switched to "light, moderate, heavy" accumulations in the zones it used to be "significant" for anything that would meet warning criteria. So i personally use moderate for advisory and significant for warning level or higher which that storm in Dec definitely was. It's all subjective and personal opinion though..

Yeah Jan 03 sucked here, there was a tight gradient in CT though. Similar to the christmas blizzard. 

Dec 03 and Jan 05 i lump into the same bucket of a long duration shredded radar mess. They were both pretty bad. Dec 05 was wild but still way better out east about 6-12 for most of CT

Advisory is like 2-5" right? I feel like that's a light event. Am I playing by CNE/NNE rules? Lol. That December storm was solid but a 7" storm in late December in this day and age isn't really going to turn any heads. You're closer to the coast so maybe to you it's classified differently.

[Hoth]

Solid A here. Near continual snow cover after Christmas, relentless cold, two big events and way above climo snowfall. If we can somehow squeeze in one more warning event to make Morch memorable I'll bump it to A+.

[UnitedWx]

Funny, I never grade only on amount of snow. Pack retention is big, however I'd rather have near continuous storms even if most/all of it melts in between. We had above average in Westfield and SImsbury, but got shafted on the Blizzard. In give this winter a solid B. If we had more continuous snow along with the pack, I'd have given an A-. I reserve A+ for winters like 93-94 and 95-96

[tamarack]

2 hours ago, UnitedWx said:

Funny, I never grade only on amount of snow. Pack retention is big, however I'd rather have near continuous storms even if most/all of it melts in between. We had above average in Westfield and SImsbury, but got shafted on the Blizzard. In give this winter a solid B. If we had more continuous snow along with the pack, I'd have given an A-. I reserve A+ for winters like 93-94 and 95-96

Given what I boldfaced, that A+ for 95-96 seems odd because of all the pack-destroying rain events.  It did have loads of snow - the 138" was tops by 30" in our 13 winters at Gardiner - but it was only 5th for SDDs.  I haven't tried to apply my rating method on those 13 years, but if I did, I'd guess no higher than B/B+.

Looking at the continuing period of meh wx (since the April 2024 paste bomb), I noted that both last winter and the current season had no snow forecast ranges that extended above 12".  First time we've had consecutive winters with such modest forecasts and it's very doubtful there will be any warned storms before 2026-27.  Also, only 3 warned events this winter and last.  Only 15-16 with 2 had less.

We finally had a strong storm but other than a few IP to start, it was all rain.  The 19.6" storm in March was fun but had only 0.77" LE and little wind, a modest storm that had fabulous dendrite formation.  Looks like this will also be only the 8th winter in which pack failed to be sustained thru March 31.  Unless we get a snowy surprise, my rating will probably be a bit lower than what I proposed upthread.

[The 4 Seasons]

13 hours ago, H2Otown_WX said:

Advisory is like 2-5" right? I feel like that's a light event. Am I playing by CNE/NNE rules? Lol. That December storm was solid but a 7" storm in late December in this day and age isn't really going to turn any heads. You're closer to the coast so maybe to you it's classified differently.

advisory is an average of 3" over a county and warning is 6". For Litchfield it's 4 and 7" respectively.