News - Blogs - Snowstorms bookend mild dry Northeast winter

Snowstorms bookend mild, dry Northeast winter
Published: 4/23/2012 4:31 PM
Last Modified: 4/23/2012 4:31 PM

Snow blankets daffodils in Saranac Lake, N.Y., Monday morning. A spring nor'easter packing soaking rain and high winds churned up the Northeast Monday morning, unleashing a burst of winter and up to a foot of snow in higher elevations inland, closing some schools and sparking concerns of power outages. A Daffest is scheduled for this coming weekend in Saranac Lake where daffodils blooming all over the village were beaten down by slushy snow. (AP Photo/Adirondack Daily Enterprise, Chris Knight)

Snow blankets a deck and trees at a home in Jackson Township, Pa., Monday. A spring nor'easter packing soaking rain and high winds churned up the Northeast Monday morning, unleashing a burst of winter and up to a foot of snow in higher elevations inland, closing some schools and sparking concerns of power outages. (AP Photo/The Tribune-Democrat, Arlene Johns)

About six months ago, we wrote about a strong nor’easter that was pounding the…well, the Northeast. It was odd because it was Halloween, and very early for a winter nor’easter.

Well, guess what: It’s the end of April and the Northeast is now dealing with a late-season nor’easter.

It was lots of snow on either side of relatively mild and dry winter for much of the Northeast, including the warmest March on record.

What’s a nor’easter again, you ask? A nor’easter is a large low pressure system that moves across the country, gaining strength from Gulf moisture before charging up the Atlantic coast states with the jet stream. They can happen year round but it’s mostly known for its winter weather impact. The storm brings frigid Arctic air and lots of moisture, which means ice and snow, especially in higher elevations.

Here are some snow and rain totals so far from the National Weather Service from 1 a.m. Sunday to 3 p.m. Monday:

Laurel Summit, Pa., 13.6 inches snow

Sylvania, Pa., 11 inches snow

Newfield, N.Y., 10 inches snow

Mecklenburg, N.Y., 8.5 inches snow

New Boston, N.H., 5.04 inches rain

Jewett City, Conn., 4.41 inches rain

West Haven, Conn., 4.19 inches rain

Last fall’s snow was measured in feet in some places. This storm wasn’t nearly as bad as last October’s, but it was considering it’s almost May.

What made both this storm and the October storm bad was the foliage. In October, it was the fall foliage that was still hanging on, weighed down by snow and ice, snapping limbs and knocking out power. Now, it’s new green leaves weighed down by the snow and ice, snapping limbs and knocking out power.

All that precipitation should help the drought conditions that have started to spread throughout the Northeast after the lackluster winter season, but the flip side is the flood threat forecasters are now warning could exist.

OK, real quickly, rant time: Some people called the most recent storm “Snowpril.” Which was a play of last year’s “Snowtober,” a play off “Snowmageddon,” “Snowpocalypse,” and what not. OK, can we cool it (haha) with putting snow in front of words to describe an event? Snowpril? Really? Too many consonants. Whatever happened to just snowstorm? Or just snow?

Rant over. Time for our weather (on the newly redesigned Tulsa World Weather page, with expanded forecasts, current conditions and almanac).

It’s beautiful. It was an amazing weekend, albeit a little chilly. This week is forecast to be sunny and in the 80s until a storm system approaches late in the week, bringing rain chances this weekend.

And you know what? I’ll take the rain. Right now, we are just about on pace, if not a little ahead of the rainfall average for the month. And we’re 1.75 inches above normal in rainfall for the year, mostly thanks to the 6 inches we got last month. After last year’s drought, typing “above normal” is refreshing, especially when I’m not talking about temperatures.

--Jerry Wofford

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Almanac

Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun
Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec

	Temperature		Precipitation
Date	High Temp	Low Temp	Total	Month to date	Historical average
1	44°	16°	0	0.00	0.05
2	59°	24°	0	0.00	0.11
3	57°	33°	0	0.00	0.16
4	68°	37°	Trace	0.00	0.21
5	69°	29°	0	0.00	0.26
6	66°	33°	0	0.00	0.32
7	59°	38°	0.05	0.05	0.38
8	51°	34°	0	0.05	0.44
9	44°	36°	0.01	0.06	0.51
10	62°	37°	0.07	0.13	0.57
11	54°	28°	0	0.13	0.64
12	44°	30°	0.25	0.38	0.70
13	55°	40°	0.01	0.39	0.76
14	°	°			0.83
15	°	°			0.89
16	°	°			0.95
17	°	°			1.02
18	°	°			1.09
19	°	°			1.16
20	°	°			1.23
21	°	°			1.31
22	°	°			1.38
23	°	°			1.46
24	°	°			1.53
25	°	°			1.61
26	°	°			1.69
27	°	°			1.77
28	°	°			1.85

TEMPERATURE

RAINFALL

SNOWFALL

Weather World

Follow Jerry Wofford on Twitter for updates during severe weather conditions.

Tulsa weather milestones of 2013 (as of Feb. 12)

Highest temperature: 70 on Jan. 11 (Record: 115 on Aug. 15, 1936)
Lowest temperature: 15 on Jan. 16 (Record: Minus-16 on Jan. 22, 1930)
Hottest month (average): 40.5 degrees in January (Record: 91.7 degrees on July 1980)
Coldest month (average): 40. 5 degrees in January (Record: 21.7 in January 1918)
Most snowfall (day): 0.1 of an inch on Feb. 12(Record: 13.2 inches on Feb. 1, 2011)
Most snowfall (month): 0.1 of an inch in February(Record: 22.5 inches in February 2011)
Most rainfall (day): 0.91 of an inch on Jan. 29 (Record: 9.27 inches on May 26-27, 1984)
Most rainfall (month): 1.54 of an inch in January (Record: 18.18 inches on September 1971)
Highest wind speed: 30 mph on Jan. 30
Previous day with any rain: Feb. 12
Previous day with 1 inch or more of rain: Oct. 17, 2012
Previous day with any snow: Feb. 12
Previous day with freezing temperatures: Feb. 12
Read regular updates on Oklahoma's unpredictable weather and learn more about meteorology from the Tulsa office of the National Weather Service.

>> Visit the main weather page
>> Send us your weather photos
>> Meet the forecasters

Contributors
Staff Writer Althea Peterson started writing for the Tulsa World in March 2007 after previous stops at the Norman Transcript in 2006 and the Oklahoma Gazette in 2005. She followed her older brother from rural Wisconsin (with a public school that never seemed to call snow days) to the University of Oklahoma, but did not follow his pursuit to study meteorology. However, she tries to find as many opportunities to report on the weather as possible.

Staff Writer Jerry Wofford came to the Tulsa World in 2010 from The Manhattan Mercury in Manhattan, Kan. Originally from western Arkansas and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, Jerry has lived in Tornado Alley his entire life and is one of those people who goes outside when the sirens go off.

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