Wait, it didn’t snow in Charlotte this winter? A meteorologist explains why
Spring is officially here, which means temperatures are rising in Charlotte and pollen is permeating the air.
But if you were paying attention, you probably noticed that it didn’t snow at all in Charlotte during winter.
Monday marked the end of Charlotte’s first winter without snow since 2013, according to the National Weather Service.
Mecklenburg County usually gets around five inches of snow annually, but the last time it snowed in Charlotte was January 2022, when 4.3 inches fell, according to NWS.
Charlotte saw its highest snowfall during the 1959-1960 cold season, from October-May, when 22.6 inches fell, according to NWS. Since 1878, there have been 12 winters where Charlotte has recorded no snow.
Why didn’t it snow in Charlotte?
The Carolinas were “locked into a warmer weather pattern for a lot of this year,” creating suboptimal conditions for snowfall, said Mike Rehnberg, a meteorologist at the NWS in Charlotte.
Rehnberg cited La Nina as an example, where cold waters in the Pacific push the polar jet stream north,resulting in “warmer and drier conditions for a large portion of the winter season” in the South.
“There are similar cycles that we can get locked into for weeks or months at a time,” he added. “It just so happened that we were locked into these cycles for a huge portion of the 2022-23 winter season that lowered the opportunities for winter weather in the Carolinas.”
Even as temperatures dropped to below freezing on multiple occasions in winter, the weather conditions were too dry to produce any precipitation, Rehnberg said.
As spring begins, there is a slim chance that it could snow. But Rehnberg said snowfall east of the North Carolina mountains is uncommon after March 15.
“It’s not impossible, but the window for that to happen is certainly narrowing,” said Rehnberg. “There’s nothing right now in the forecast that would support that happening in the next week.”
Will no snow in Charlotte be a regular occurrence?
Since weather patterns like La Nina typically don’t last for years at a time, there is a chance it could snow in Charlotte next winter, Rehnberg said.
“It certainly fluctuates with those smaller scale patterns,” said Rehnberg, adding that forecasts can be tough to predict a year in advance. “It’s hard to say with any real certainty what kind of pattern we’re going to trend toward by next winter.”
