New England, Canadian Maritimes Get PHD in Snow

That's PHD as in "piled higher and deeper".

The amazing thing about this winter is that the winter pretty much has been compressed into the last three weeks. In 1995-1996 Boston's record snowfall of 107.6 inches accumulated beginning in November and ending in April. This year that same amount of snow has almost accumulated in the last three weeks.

Last week about this time Boston had tallied 78.5 inches of snow for the season, but another foot has been added to that since then. As of today the season's snowfall for Boston was up to 96.0 inches, just 11.6 inches short of the record snowfall in 1995-1996. All but 5.5 inches of that, 91.5 inches, has fallen in the past 25 days. South of Boston snow amounts are higher, with Blue Hill up to 109.3 inches (more than 9 feet!)since January 24. The season total at Blue Hill stands at 131.4 inches. AS of today there was 36 to 42 inches of snow on the ground in Plymouth, Suffolk, and Norfolk counties in Massachusetts. Up the coast in Eastport, ME our CoCoRaHS observer there reported 78.5 inches on the ground today.

Snow piled up along the right field wall in Fenway Park in Boston.
Photo credit:  Jim Cantore via Twitter

You can see some spectacular "before and after" photos of  the snow in Boston in this Mashable article.

While a lot of attention has been on New England, the Canadian Maritime provinces have been getting hit just as hard by the snow. Three to four feet of snow blanket New Brunswick, and CoCoRaHS observers on Prince Edward Island reported as much as 55 inches (140 cm) of snow on the ground today.

Snow depths on February 17 for New England and Canadian Maritime provinces, including CoCoRaHS observations.

Digging out in Summerside, Prince Edward Island.
Photo from Twitter

8-14 day temperature outlook

All indications are that the cold weather will continue through the end of the month for the eastern half of the country. There appears to be a chance of snow every few days in the Northeast and New England, but right now nothing major appears to be in the cards. It looks like the expanse of cold air over the eastern two-thirds of the country will suppress the storm track south of New England keeping any major lows from developing off the New England coast. That's not to say it won't snow, but hopefully snowfalls will be measured only inches and not in feet. There is little doubt in my mind that Boston and many other locations will set new season snowfall records this year.



U.S. snow cover has jumped to almost 49 percent after the storm that affected the Midwest, mid-Atlantic, and Southeast yesterday. It had been down to 24 percent on February 14. What is also evident on the map is the lack of snow in the western U.S., but that's another story.