How This Winter’s Snowfall Differed on Every Coast

This 12 months’s snow season is a story of two starkly completely different winters: A chilly and snowy one within the West, and a heat and comparatively snowless one within the East.

The Western United States acquired much more snow than common this season, a lot of it unleashed by punishing storms that battered California particularly onerous all through the winter. Elements of the Japanese half of the nation, nevertheless, noticed a lot much less snow than regular amid unusually heat winter temperatures.

It’s not unusual for the 2 coasts to expertise opposing climate circumstances. This could occur when the jet stream, a band of winds that blow from west to east across the planet, begins to meander right into a wavelike sample. This wind sample leads to cooler circumstances the place it dips southward and hotter circumstances the place it arcs northward.

The timing of precipitation and freezing temperatures additionally influenced this 12 months’s unsettling winter season, mentioned Karin Gleason, a local weather scientist for the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In some circumstances, precipitation simply occurred to fall on the identical time that temperatures had been chilly sufficient for snow to kind, Ms. Gleason added. However, if temperatures had been too heat, extra precipitation might have fallen as rain, quite than snow.

“It’s a conspiring of different factors,” she mentioned.

A Chilly, Snowy Winter for the West

P.c of common cumulative snowfall

A succession of atmospheric river storms pummeled Western states from late December to January, and once more in March. These storms had been largely chargeable for dumping report quantities of snow throughout a lot of the West. The Western United States additionally skilled colder-than-normal temperatures this winter, which helped snow to fall and persist with the bottom.

A few of that winter snow fell at unusually low elevations, from a variety of 500 to 2,000 ft, a uncommon sight in areas just like the hills overlooking the San Francisco Bay Space. Warming temperatures over the previous many years have usually resulted in snow that’s concentrated at colder, larger elevations, mentioned David Simeral, a analysis scientist with the Desert Analysis Institute.

Colder-than-normal temperatures throughout a lot of the West additionally helped construct up and maintain a deep snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada and elements of the intermountain West, together with northern Arizona, western Colorado, Nevada and Utah.

April 1 is a benchmark date for when water managers anticipate snowpack to peak. On that day, the typical statewide snowpack ranges — as measured by the quantity of liquid water out there within the snow — had been greater than double the historic common for California. Within the southern Sierras, which usually receives much less snow, common snowpack ranges reached 62.6 inches, practically triple the historic quantity.

Wholesome snowpack and replenished reservoirs have helped ease California out of its long-term drought, the driest three-year stretch on report. The extraordinarily moist Western winter has additionally improved the long-term precipitation shortfalls that had collected over a number of years, bringing elements of western Oregon, southern Idaho, Nevada and central Utah out of maximum drought.

Although the record-deep snowpack will carry welcome water provide advantages to giant swaths of the West within the spring, it additionally poses a larger danger of flooding because the snow melts, particularly if temperatures rise rapidly.

A Heat, Wet Winter for the East

P.c of common cumulative snowfall

A distinct sample occurred within the East, the place snow has been elusive for a lot of cities that commonly anticipate it. As an alternative, warmer-than-normal winter climate introduced extra rain than snow.

After 328 consecutive snowless days, New York Metropolis lastly recorded 0.4 inch of snow on Feb. 1. Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., additionally went greater than 300 days with out measurable snow — outlined as at the least a tenth of an inch.

“This winter hasn’t been unusual in terms of total precipitation,” mentioned Aiguo Dai, an atmospheric science professor on the College at Albany, SUNY. However the hotter climate has meant that extra precipitation than common within the Northeast has fallen as rain, quite than snow, Dr. Dai mentioned.

The phenomenon is named a heat snow drought, and it’s prone to happen extra ceaselessly on account of warming temperatures, specialists say.

When temperatures had been chilly sufficient, precipitation didn’t all the time fall in giant quantities, which was the case when a bitterly chilly wind chill gripped the Northeast in early February.

Although a lot of the Northeast city hall had been spared harsh winter climate this season, a lethal blizzard early within the winter dumped a number of ft of snow in Buffalo. Snow additionally piled up in parts of upstate New York, northwestern Massachusetts and southern Vermont in a winter storm in mid-March.