Snowfall puts area at No. 9 in books

The heavy rainfall of 2003 is not predicted for this year, one expert said.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Thanks to the 2.4 inches of snow that fell Thursday, the winter snow season of 2003-04 is in the record books.
Since November 2003, the Mahoning Valley recorded 72.9 inches of snow, good enough for the ninth- most amount of snow to fall during a winter season for the area. If the Valley gets an additional 0.5 inch of snow this month, it would tie the winter of 1977-78 for the eighth snowiest on record for the area.
Since 1974, the Valley has averaged 2.4 inches of snowfall in April, the exact amount the area received Thursday, said Brian Mitchell, a meteorological technician with the National Weather Service in Cleveland.
If the Valley gets only 1.1 more inches of snow this month, it would crack the top 10 snowiest Aprils. In 1944 and 1990, 3.5 inches of snow fell in the area, tying for the 10th-snowiest Aprils in Valley weather history.
It's been a winter of heavy snowfall, particularly in December and January, Mitchell said.
The 49.5 inches of snow that fell in December and January was the second most snowfall the area received for those two months combined in weather history.
Mild February
The area would already be in the top 10 if not for such a mild February. Only 4.6 inches of snow fell that month, making it the fifth-least-snowiest February in weather history for the area.
In March, 13.9 inches of snow fell, which is above normal for the month, but not even close to being in the top 10. The 10th-snowiest March in the Valley on record was 18 inches recorded in 1984. In November, 2.5 inches of snow fell.
The NWS considers the winter weather season to be between November and April.
While the Valley got more snow this year than usual, the area isn't expected to see as much rain this year as it did in 2003.
But the Valley experienced above-average precipitation for the first quarter of the year, and considerably more than last year during the same time frame.
Even so, the NWS is predicting average rainfall through July, and doesn't anticipate the Valley getting anything close to the torrential downpours of last May and July that led to flooding.
"We're expecting normal precipitation and normal temperatures from April to July for the Youngstown area," Mitchell said.
"We're not looking at getting the rainfall we got last year. The overall pattern is normal. Of course, you can pick up an isolated storm or two, but when you average it out, it will be normal. It won't be as bad as last year."
A wet one in '03
Last year was the fifth-wettest year on record in the Mahoning Valley since the National Weather Service began measuring precipitation in this area about 60 years ago.
The official count is made at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna.
Of the 46.01 inches of precipitation that fell in the Valley last year, 10.39 inches of rain was recorded in July, including 4.65 inches July 21, making it the wettest July on record for the area.
Also, 6.84 inches of rain fell in May, the second most for that month in this area's weather history.
But 2003 didn't start out as bad as this year.
During the first three months of 2003, 6.29 inches of precipitation was recorded for the Valley.
During that same time period this year, 8.36 inches of precipitation fell.
The area's average for January through March is 7.42 inches, according to the NWS.
The NWS measures precipitation -- considered to be rain, snow, ice pellets and hail -- using a rain gauge at the airport.
Rainfall is a straight measurement; an inch of rain equals an inch of precipitation.
But because snow is considerably less moist than rain, the NWS considers about 10 inches of snow to equal 1 inch of precipitation.
skolnick@vindy.com