OSWEGO, NY – The Port City area has shrugged off another “long winter.”
“It was long in the fact that we had a little snow in November and December and January and February were pretty full,” according to Bill Gregway, local observer for the National Weather Service. “After that, things pretty much dried right up except for a couple of times.”
Spring finally arrived at 7:21 p.m. Sunday.
For the purpose of his reports, Gregway groups the seasons into three-month blocks with winter being December, January and February.
The average temperature was 25.1 degrees, which is 1.1 degrees below average.
“That puts us in a 3-way tie for 36th coldest winter – in the past 156 years,” Gregway said. “It looks like we’ll come in as about the 13th snowiest winter since 1884.”
The highest temperature was 58 degrees on Dec. 1 and the lowest was -11 degrees on Jan. 24.
Total precipitation for the winter months was 11.80 inches. That is 1.38 inches higher than normal.
There was precipitation on 73 days and no precipitation on 17 days.
The greatest precipitation in a 24-hour period was 2.52 inches on Dec. 1.
Snowfall for the 3 months, 171.8 inches, was 54.1 inches higher than average.
“We had snow pellets 15 times, a lot of lake effect,” Gregway said. “We had ice pellets 2 times and freezing rain on 4 occasions.”
The greatest snowfall in a 24-hour period was 12.0 inches on Jan. 5. There were a few more times when around 10 – 11 inches fell, Gregway added.
The greatest depth of snow on the ground was 38 inches on Feb. 10 and Feb. 12.
The number of cloudy days, 71, was 3 above average.
The number of partly cloudy days, 15, was 1 below average.
The number of clear days, 4, was 2 below average.
The area received 19 percent of the possible amount of sunshine. That’s about 10 percentages below where it should be, Gregway said.
There were 2 thunderstorms. That is 2 above average.
And, there were no foggy days, which is 1 below average.
Overall, it really wasn’t that cold of a winter Gregway observed. It was zero or below only twice, he said, zero on Jan. 17 and -11 degrees on Jan. 24.
The highest barometric pressure was 30.56 on Jan. 31 and the lowest was 29.22 on Dec. 13.
“We had a lot of wind. There were gusts of more than 35 mph on 4 days during February on the 8th, 12th, 14th and 19th,” Gregway said.
It was a “relatively normal” Oswego winter, Gregway said, adding, “We have had much colder and we have had much warmer.”
There is still a chance we will add to our snowfall total. The average snowfall for March is 19.3 inches and April’s average is 4.3 inches.
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