Before winter ends, we wanted to take a look back at how this year goes down in the history books!
I have to mention, "Meteorological Winter" is the entire months of December, January and February, it doesn't encompass the "calendar winter" which began at 5:02 a.m. December 21st, 2020 and ends 5:37 a.m. March 20th, 2021. For my sanity, I chose to use the high and low temperatures within the meteorological winter, this takes the beginning of December into account and leaves off the month of March. When it comes to seasonal snowfall, I'm following the National Weather Service average seasonal snowfall for the entire year, this can be described as snowfall since July 2020.
So let's get to it, shall we?
In the image above you can see the yo-yo of snowfall each month. December was a great month, nearly six inches above normal and a single day total of 18.4" on December 26th. Not pictured is November, on average receives 7.9" of snow but in 2020 only picked up .8". January was another deficit at under a foot of snow and normally comes in over two feet of snow! February was a month for winter sports lovers, 27.5" of snow, almost a foot more than average and at least 6" of snow on the ground for 21 days. By March, typically we're not thinking of snow anymore but on average the month of March gets 12.9". As of March 19th, we've only received a half an inch at the Buffalo Airport and that's nearly eight inches below normal for this date.
The "total so far..." in the above photo comes from November 2020 to current. The month of October does factor into the seasonal snowfall total since on average .9" of snow falls in October, however October 2020 only had a trace of snow on the 30th.
We're at a 22.7" deficit in snowfall for the season but don't count out the rest of March, even April normally adds a couple of inches and flakes are possible in early May!
Temperatures have been kind this season with most months above average. December remained above freezing on average! January was nearly five degrees above average but also had two of the three coldest days this winter! February was the winter make-up month, averaging 1.5 degrees below normal and had the coldest temperature of 6 degrees on the 17th. Even though March doesn't make up the meteorological winter, the first three weeks of March have been about 2 1/2 degrees above average and hosted a record high of 69F on the 10th. An honorable mention as well, November 2020 is in the record books at 46.5 degrees, that's 6th warmest on record.
I've mentioned a few of the stats listed above already. For clarification the 56F on December 12th, 2020 is the meteorological winter high temperature. Three days tied for the coldest winter high temperature, January 28th, 29th and February 13th. The coldest temperatures this winter was the morning low on February 17th at 6F. Some interesting facts, this season never dropped below 20F for daytime highs and never dropped below zero! Usually a couple of days end up in the teens and below zero.
