'Very low': Erie approached record for least snowiest calendar year in 2023, NWS says
When it came to snow, 2023 wasn't normal in Erie.
"Very low" was how Karen Clark, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Cleveland, described snowfall in Erie last year. It was so low that 2023 has now become the second least snowiest calendar year for Erie going back to 1893, when the NWS began keeping such records.
The National Weather Service recorded at least a trace of snow for Erie in eight months in 2023 but the total for the calendar year was only 29.4 inches of snow. That's second only to the 17.9 inches of snow that fell in 1943, Clark said.
In the 2022 calendar year, the snowfall total was 83.7 inches, according to NWS data.
Clark said Erie's least snowfall in a season, generally considered to be October through April, was 12.1 inches in 1943-44. The seasonal normal for Erie is 104.3 inches.
The snow total for Erie's 2022-23 season was only 52 inches.
Based on the low snow totals in the second half of 2023 and the prediction for the first part of 2024, Erie could be headed for a second season of below-normal snow.
First half of 2023
The combined snowfall for January through March, which was part of the 2022-23 season, totaled 22.6 inches, well below the normal 65.7 inches for those three months.
April's trace of snow was below the usual 2.6 inches. May brought a trace of snow to Erie, which normally sees none that month but has a record of 1.7 dating back to 1923.
The winter of 2022-23, which included December 2022 and January and February of 2023, ranked ninth for least snow in Erie, with only 19.3 inches, according to the NWS. The normal is 77.5 inches for the three months considered by the NWS to be winter.
Second half of 2023
Snow returned in October but Erie saw only 6.8 inches of it during the final three months of the year. The combined normal for October through December is 36 inches.
The late 2023 total included October's 2.3 inches, which was above the normal one-tenth of an inch for the month but not near the 1925 record of 14.7. November had 3.1 inches. The normal for that month is 9.6 inches.
December, which is considered the first of the three winter months for NWS purposes, brought only 1.4 inches of snow to Erie, compared with the normal 26.3.
Clark said the start to the 2023-24 season was "quite a bit below normal."
She said it was in part due to the second warmest December on record in Erie, which averaged 41.5 degrees Fahrenheit. She said the normal average temperature for December in Erie is 34.1 degrees. With warmer temperatures, more of the precipitation fell as rain than snow, she said.
What's ahead?
According to a 2023-24 U.S. winter outlook issued Oct. 19 by the NOAA Climate Prediction Center, all of Pennsylvania was expected to have temperatures from December through February that were leaning above average. The center put the chance of above normal temperatures at 33% to 40%. The same was expected for much of the northern continental United States, driven by El Niño. The center is a division of the NWS.
During that same period, the center was predicting precipitation leaning below normal for northwestern Pennsylvania. The chance of below-normal precipitation for December through February in the part of the state including Erie County was 33% to 40%. Other parts of the state had an equal chance of being above or below normal or were expected to lean above normal.
"We are in an El Niño pattern and El Niño does tend to support warmer than normal temperatures," Clark said.
In Erie, she said on Wednesday, temperatures should be trending cooler over the next two weeks, which is typical for January. However, she said there wasn't likely to be any "dramatic snowfall" in the next week.
Dana Massing can be reached at dmassing@timesnews.com.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie PA 2023 snowfall was second lowest on records kept by NWS
