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Cold fact: Jan. snow ranks 3rd for Valley
Winter Storm 2009
Gallery
The following is a series of images from Saturday, January 10 in Mahoning and Trumbull counties. From Western Reserve Road to East Market Street, residents dealt with a large accumulation of snow by working and playing.
Winter Weather January 2009
Gallery
Video
Most of the snow fell on three days last month.
Remember those major snowstorms when you were young?
The snow was over your head. A story was going around that some kid’s family was trapped in their house because the snowdrifts made it impossible for them to get out.
How about the tales you heard from your parents or grandparents who walked to school through 5 feet of snow?
The stories were amusing but greatly exaggerated.
The 35.8 inches of snow that fell in January was the third-largest accumulation of the white stuff for any month in the Mahoning Valley since the National Weather Service started tracking snowfall accumulation in 1934, 75 years ago.
The snowiest month in the Valley was January 1999 with 36.4 inches, followed by 36 inches in January 1978.
Anything over 0.6 of an inch and last month would have been the snowiest.
More than half of the snow fell on three days: 11.3 inches on Jan. 10, 2.9 inches on the 14th, and 6.1 inches on the 28th.
When asked if January was a miserable month, Dennis Bray, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Cleveland, laughed and said that’s a good word to describe it.
“Unfortunately this is weather in Northeast Ohio, but it was bit much” in January, Bray said.
A “bit much” is a matter of perception.
Besides being the third-snowiest month in the Valley’s weather history, it was the eighth-coldest January in the area. Temperature records for the area date back to 1897, so that’s No. 8 out of more than 100 Januarys.
The Valley had 14 days last month in which the temperature dropped below 10 above zero. The coldest day was Jan. 16 at 10 below zero, closely followed by 9 below zero on the 17th.
Last month’s snowfall was 13.9 inches more than normal for a January in the area.
The area’s snow accumulation last month was more than Buffalo with 30.6 inches and Rochester, N.Y., with 29.3 inches, two Snow Belt cities.
But wasn’t much when compared with others in the Snow Belt, 59.2 inches in Erie and 49.8 in Syracuse, N.Y.
Mansfield had 43.8 inches last month and Cleveland 40.5.
So is the worst of it over?
Though it will warm up by the end of the week, the weather service’s February forecast calls for above- normal precipitation, but normal to above-normal temperatures.
Punxsutawney Phil, the world’s most famous groundhog, saw his shadow Monday, predicting winter will last six more weeks.
Like many meteorologists, Bray isn’t a Phil fan.
“Too bad we can’t go groundhog hunting,” he joked.
As of Monday, 69.4 inches of snow fell on the area this winter.
The area averages 10.5 inches of snow in February, 10.4 inches in March and 2.2 in April.
The most snow for a season is 102.8 inches for the 2007-08 winter.
If the Valley just meets its average snowfall, it will end this winter season with 92.5 inches, good enough for the second-snowiest winter.
skolnick@vindy.com