Winter 2019-2020 certainly hasn’t impressed us with total snowfall in the Buffalo area.
After a quick start in November, numbers quickly fell behind the average in December and never bounced back despite a more active February.
Despite the low season total, this season has had hints of following a trend that’s been developing in recent decades: snow season is getting shorter and it’s shifting slightly later in the calendar.
There are a couple of data sets that help tell the story. The first is looking at the dates for the earliest and latest final 1” snowfall in any given winter. For Buffalo, 4 of the 5 record latest 1” snows were recorded in 1950 or earlier. Meanwhile 4 of the 5 earliest final 1” snows happened after 1950 with 3 coming after the year 2000.
The month-by-month average snowfall has been changing too. When considering the average snowfall each month from 1970 to now vs 2000 to now (50 year average vs 20 year average), snowfall has dropped about 25% in November but risen about 3 percent in March.
There are also signs showing February may eventually become our snowiest month, on average. That title is currently held by the month of January.
Watch this week’s Heather’s Weather Whys for some national perspective on these shifting snow stats.
New episodes of Heather’s Weather Whys are posted to the WGRZ YouTube channel every Wednesday evening. You can also watch on Thursdays at 5:30 on Channel 2 News.
If you have a weather question for Heather to answer, send it to her at heather.waldman@wgrz.com or connect with her on Facebook or Twitter.
