It sure has been a snowy last few weeks. As of Jan. 1, 2013, Madison had officially received only 32.4 inches of snow — nearly half of which (15.2 inches) was delivered in our Dec. 19-20 snowstorm. However, since Feb. 1 we have accumulated 30.8 additional inches of snow (as of March 14).
In those 42 days, Madison has had 30 days on which at least some snow has fallen. This is a truly remarkable period for frequency of snowfall. Aside from the regularity of snowfall in February and March, our seasonal total of 63.2 inches (as of March 14) ranks 14th all-time in Madison for seasonal snowfall. In fact, we only need an additional 7.5 inches to break into the top 10 snowiest winters of all time as the 70.7 inches that fell in 1897-98 currently holds the No. 10 spot in the record books.
Our guess is that this is rather unlikely — but not impossible — as the longer-range forecasts are not suggesting any really dramatic warm-up through late March, well after the Spring equinox that falls on March 20 this year.
This has been a nearly exact opposite of last March when, by the 14th, we were experiencing temperatures in the high 70s (it was 78 on March 14 last year!). March 15, 2012 was our first in a string of five days (over a single week) with temperatures over 80F. What a difference a year makes.
