After several consecutive lackluster winters – and with a opinion that doesn’t exactly scream “snowy days on the road!” – a fleeting feeling of flaking and snow seems scarce across North Carolina.
By opening historical records we can know how long it has been since heavy snowfall in different parts of the state and some areas have had Long wait for more white stuff.
Using weather station observations, CoCoRaHS National Weather Service reports and analyzes include NWS Raleigh Event Archivesand even Satellite-based daily snow surveyWe’ve stitched together the maps below to show our most recent 1 inch, 6 inchesand 12 inches snow.
You can read these maps as if drawn on canvas, with each new stroke masking the lines below it. The most recent events, shown in blue, obscure older events in green, yellow, and brown. Together, they show our snow history facts layered across the state.
One inch, in a pinch
Let’s start low with an inch of snow: enough to cover grass, but very thin to build a snowman.
In some areas, this season has snowed this much! Mount Mitchell measured 1.8 inches of snow on November 5.
Dating back to last winter, Events February 6-7 this year brought at least an inch for most of western North Carolina, except parts of Wilkes County had the last snow arrive a little earlier, in January.
The northeastern Piedmont and northern coastal plains also got an inch or so last winter during an event on January 27-28. Stay in that eventTotals up to 5 inches were recorded in Roxboro.
Farther south, it’s clear how uncommon snow has been lately. Most banks south of Piedmont and Outer Banks last received at least an inch of the trio of events in 2018 — nearly four years ago at some point.
Parts of Bladen and Columbus counties haven’t seen an inch since March 12, 2017, but the longest snow drought belongs to our far south coast. Much of Brunswick County, including Ocean Isle Beach, Holden Beach and Bald Head Island, last saw an inch of snow return January 11, 2011over a decade ago!
Add six to the mix
Six inches represents a year or more of snowfall in most areas, so individual events with a lot of snow like this are certainly less common. Even some snow-prone parts of the Mountains haven’t had a 6-inch event in nearly three years, since December 8-9, 2018 storm.
That event dominated the map in the northern and western parts of the state, while several other 2018 storms – on January 3-4 and January 17-18 – visible throughout central Piedmont and northern Coastal Plains.
The last time Charlotte saw 6 inches in a single event was almost eight years ago, on 12-13 February 2014. For Fayetteville and much of the I-95 corridor, the last time they saw six inches of ground was during Christmas storm in 2010.
The pockets of the Coastal Plains have to travel even further back to find their final six-inch event. For Wilmington and the south coast, that comes in a Christmas storm since 1989. And a small sliver of the north coast along Pine Island last received six inches of snow more than 40 years ago on March 1-2, 1980.
Put your feet down
Now we are talking about severe snowfall. A heavy snowfall is enough to shut down cities for a week. It’s what kids dream of, but for most kids in the state today, it’s just a dream.
The main exceptions again came to the north and west, where a December 2018 storm brought a layer of snow to much of the Mountains and northwestern Piedmont. Ten years earlier, Charlotte had grown 13.2 inches in one February 2004 storm across western Piedmont.
Some other oddities on this map include end of October 2012 snow in the Mountains associated with Hurricane Sandy and 20 inches of snow + in January 2000 actually not Raleigh’s most recent foot; That honor belongs to January 2002 storm through the Triangle.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of this map, however, are the areas that haven’t seen a single snowfall in decades. The rarity of such major events means that some unlucky locals are sure to miss their limited opportunities, creating a long gap since their last blockbuster snowfall.
That includes downtown Greensboro. While the official lookout at the airport recorded 12.8 inches during the December 2018 event, central Guilford County received only about 11 inches from that storm. Recent decades offer a number of near-similar ski runs, so to find a foot of snow there in the historical records we have to go back early March 1969when 12.5 inches covered Gate City.
Meanwhile, Fayetteville and several other areas of eastern North Carolina have gone nearly 63 years — since December 1958 — without seeing a foot or more in an event.
This map even throws up a few mysteries, as in small parts of the Sandhills and north of the Outer Banks, there is no data dating back nearly 100 years to clearly indicate a 12-inch event occurred in the area. there.
A now decommissioned weather station in Kill Devil Hills reported a total of 13.7 inches during the December 1943 storm, but nearby Manteo was only 9 inches in that event, so some or all This narrow stretch of coast may have their footprints – at least known drought from far away.
Laurinburg and surrounding parts of the Sandhills have had several close calls, including 9 inches in March 1980 and 11 inches in February 1973but no events exceeding one foot show up in its dataset from the early 1940s.
The best candidate for that part of the state might be early March 1927 storm yields 24 inches for Fayetteville but only 7 inches in nearby Lumberton. That sharp snowfall gradient could eventually mean some parts of Scotland and Robeson counties have to go back more than a century to find their last layer of snow.
So what lessons can these maps teach us?
If you’re a snow lover, they probably don’t hold out much hope as parts of the state have never seen a foot of snow in your life.
However, more recently December 2018 storm also shows that substantial snowfall is still possible, with the right set of atmospheric compositions.
Digging deeper, we also found that you don’t need a rumbling El Niño to create a heavy snowfall. In fact, some of the most common years on these maps are in a neutral ENSO period, such as 2003-04, or even La Niña, such as 2010-11.
Of course, that is by no means a guarantee that this Winter La Niña will produce similar snowfall results, but it’s always a possibility. And it only takes one storm to create a new snow stroke, possibly even ending some long waits for the next big blizzard.
