Looking back at the 2014 - 2015 winter season, there was a drastic difference between how New England faired compared to the Mid-Atlantic. Despite an early snow event in late November, the Northeast across the board had a slow to winter with an abnormally high December snow deficit. Even into January, the first few weeks were rather quiet but that would soon change. By late January, winter kicked in high gear and Mother Nature pounded New England with consecutive blockbuster winter storms for nearly three weeks. In fact, between January 27 and February 15, over 80 inches of snow buried Logan Airport in Boston, MA! Folks farther south on I - 95 were spared this brutal welcome to winter and while they did experience a slew of wintry events from late January to mid February, most were under 10 inches. By March, Old Man Winter turned his attention away from New England and more storms tracked south of New York City. While it was nowhere near the extreme intensity, places such as New Brunswick, NJ and Philadelphia, PA saw their snowiest month of the winter and some of the largest events of the season in March 2015. To learn just how drastically different the Mid Atlantic compared to New England, see our graph illustrations below.
Analyzing the temperature side of the winter, the Mid-Atlantic and New England were more comparable. As shown in the graph below, areas from Boston to Baltimore started the season off with a cooler than normal November followed by a record warm December where monthly temperatures spiked nearly 4 degrees above normal. However, from January to March 2015, Mother Nature continuously blasted the Northeast with frigid arctic air. Not only did February 2015 rank as one of the all-time coldest months for numerous locations, but we also experienced one of the coldest January to March periods ever!
To prove just how anomalously cold the winter was, the graph below shows that many of the major Northeast cities had nearly triple the normal amount of low temperatures fall below 10 degrees! See the other table below to learn which day was the coldest of the entire winter. In fact, many of these cities have not experienced such cold temperatures since January 19, 1994! Our upcoming winter summaries (distributed to alert clients), due out in late April or early May, will provide a more indepth summary of this winter season.
