Winter 2013-14 In Some Pretty Exclusive Company

It's the winter that won't end.


Continuous cold, frequent snows, perpetual snow cover and extremely cold nights have, at the very least, made our dispositions a little testy. We are all short fused. Lake Erie has frozen over with ice cover at levels not seen since the late 1970s for the 3rd week of February. We're infected with cabin fever with only small glimmers of spring-like temperatures on the 8day forecast.

We all--most of us--want this to end NOW!

How exclusive a winter has this been through February 17th?  First, we need to categorize the winter elements and see where this winter ranks. I use these four as an overall measure of winter's severity: TOTAL SNOWFALL, DAYS WITH SNOW ON THE GROUND, AVERAGE TEMPERATURE & NIGHTS BELOW 10 DEGREES. 

1. Total Snowfall for 2013-14 now ranks 10th

2. Days with Snow Cover at or more than 1 inch ranks 7th

3. Overall Average Temperature since December 1st ranks 29th

4. Number of night below 10 degrees ranks 16th

The winter is ranked ery high in some categories and not so high in others. So I looked for the winters that are ranked HIGHER than this winter in EACH of these FOUR categories. What did I find? 

ONLY FOUR WINTERS ranked higher in 3 categories...

1917-18, 1976-77, 1962-63 & 1969-70

ONLY ONE ranked HIGHER in EVERY CATEGORY: 

The winter of 1977-78!

When did we see our first string of "milder" temperatures
(5 days at or about 50 degrees) in these years?  Was spring warmer or colder than normal? That answer later this week...