'Boardwalk Empire' the snow empire? Top snow totals in the eastern US

A map of this season's snowfall through April 25. (NOAA)

With snowfall odds dropping across the eastern portion of the United States, the National Weather Service has released a tally of how much snowfall was recorded this year, and there are some major winners and losers.

In what turned out to be a below-average year for snowfall up and down the Eastern Seaboard and across much of the Appalachians, Atlantic City, New Jersey, stands out as a place that far and away exceeded its annual snowfall. The place that inspired the TV series Boardwalk Empire was a veritable snow empire this winter. Through April 29, the coastal South Jersey city received 33.3 inches of powder, nearly doubling its annual average of 17.4 inches.

Time and time again, Atlantic City found itself in the bull's-eye of storms that managed to scrape other major cities along the East Coast. In fact, it took until only late January for the city to cross its average snowfall for the year.

Joanna Cooke shovels out her car, Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Boston managed to receive more snowfall than normal this year, beating its 49-inch average by about 5 inches. Much of its snowfall came in a record-setting blizzard that struck the region, dumping 23.8 inches of snow in the city and more than 30 inches just 20 miles away.

The snowfall helped verify AccuWeather's 2021-2022 U.S. Winter Forecast, which called for Boston to have an essentially average year for snowfall. In New York City, where snow totals are measured in Central Park, AccuWeather forecasters again called for an about-average season. The forecast largely verified, with totals coming in just slightly below average at 25.3 inches when compared to the yearly average of 29.8.

In Washington, D.C., where winter weather tends to be harder to come by, the city managed to scrape its way to an average winter, finishing with just a half-inch less snow than its 13.7 inch average and slightly exceeding AccuWeather forecasters' start-of-winter prediction for the region.

Snow and ice accumulate on a blooming cherry tree in Washington, Saturday, March 12, 2022, as temperatures dip into the into 20s. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Among the biggest snowfall losers were spots in parts of the Interior Northeast. Syracuse, New York, had just 76 inches of snow. That number was likely plenty for many, but it came in well below the city's average of 127.8 inches of snow annually.

Scranton, Pennsylvania, also came in with a slow snow year, reporting nearly 20 inches below its annual average of 45.1 inches. Down in Ohio, the city of Cincinnati also struggled to get snow on the board, measuring a measly 13.3 inches of snow, 10 less than it receives in a typical year.

Besides Atlantic City, there were very many big snow winners. Norfolk, Virginia, was one of a few cities to climb above average, recording 11.2 inches, which is a fair bit higher than its typical annual total of 6.2 inches. Columbia, South Carolina, also managed to nearly double its annual snowfall, recording 2 inches instead of its average 1.2.

Paul Bossert walks his dog Winston through a snow-covered Southpointe Drive during a winter storm, Sunday, Jan. 16, 2022, in Morganton, N.C. (AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek)

Still, an average winter is something that many snow lovers can celebrate, given how hard it can be to get snow to fall. Those who like snow might remember the winter of 2019-2020, where New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia all had top 10 least snowiest years.

For all of Atlantic City's above-average snowfall this winter, the true snow empire crown perhaps belongs to a place much farther north. This year, the city that saw the most snowfall this winter was Caribou, Maine, which measured 122.5 inches of snow, just slightly above its annual average of 118.2 inches of powder. Caribou has led cities and towns on the Eastern Seaboard when it comes to snow reports for the past four years.

While it is all but out of the question that most of the cities mentioned see another flake this season, some parts of the Interior Northeast do have a shot to have a little more snowfall, perhaps to the chagrin of AccuWeather reader Karen Beth, who wrote a musical number explaining that she has been rooting for snow to go away since early March.

In interior cities like Buffalo, New York, where AccuWeather forecasters correctly predicted a slightly above-average season with 100 inches of snowfall, a late-April storm dropped 1.4 inches of fresh snow on April 27, sending the seasonal total to 97.4 inches. This could very well be the final snow accumulation of the season, according to AccuWeather's long-range forecast.

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