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Winters are getting warmer and they’re also getting shorter. So we’re getting less snow ... right?

It’s not just your imagination, winters across the U.S. are changing.

Winters are getting warmer and they’re also getting shorter. So we’re getting less snow ... right?

Are winters getting less snowy?

It’s not just your imagination, winters across the U.S. are changing.

Planet Earth

Are winters getting less snowy?Published: May 3, 2024Clara Alexander: When I was a kid, I cherished snowy winters filled with sledding and snow forts. Recent winters, however, have started to seem distinctly less snowy. I live in New England, a region known for its blizzards, but I can't remember the last time I stepped out into the winter wonderland I remember from my childhood, and I'm not the only one who's noticed this.Are winters truly becoming less snowy? Well, winters are getting warmer, and they're also getting shorter by nearly two weeks since 1972. So we're getting less snow, right? Not quite. These are annual snowfall totals from my hometown of Boston, going back to 1970. If my memory is accurate, there should be a clear downward trend, but there isn't. There is no correlation, negative or positive, between snowfall and time. How could this be? How is snowfall staying the same while temperatures increase?David A. Robinson: You can get warmer, and we have, and it can still snow a lot because the temperature still remains below freezing. It's just less below freezing.Elizabeth Burakowski: Snowfall is responding not just to temperature, it's also responding to how much moisture is available.Clara Alexander: It turns out that warmer temperatures have varied effects on snowfall rates. Some areas of Alaska, the fastest-warming US state, have seen record-smashing roof, crushing amounts of snow this year, while in parts of the southwest, southeast, and Midwest snowfall has been in steep decline. In Boston, the impact of rising temperatures can be counterintuitive. One reason is that hotter air can hold more moisture, which will fall as snow when it's cold enough and rain when it's not. This also means that winter storms, when they occur, may actually bring more snow than they used to.David A. Robinson: It's been found that more of our precipitation is falling in large events, not necessarily that we're getting more. When it rains, it pours is essentially what it looks like.Clara Alexander: This could explain the anomalous winter season in Anchorage, Alaska. The 49th state is getting warmer and warmer, but it's still cold enough to snow.Today is Christmas. It is nearly 50 degrees Fahrenheit in Boston, and I'm uncomfortable in my thick winter coat. I've barely seen a single snowflake this entire fall, and having lived here my whole life, this just feels weird.But there is another measurement of snowiness that may have some answers. The number of days each winter with snow on the ground or snow-covered days. This graph shows snow-covered days in Boston going back to 1997, and although it may not look like there's a trend here, there is. The correlation between time and snow-covered days is negative and statistically significant, which means that even though total snowfall may not be decreasing, it is melting faster, and Bostonians are experiencing increasingly bare winters.David A. Robinson: You can have less time with snow cover and just as much snow. Snowfall versus cover can tell different stories.Clara Alexander: So what is happening to snowiness in the US? In some parts of the country, snowfall is decreasing, in others it is increasing, and in some it is staying about the same, despite the fact that overall temperatures are rising. Snow-covered days paint a more consistent picture across the US, too. Since 1972, they have decreased in the US by an average of nearly two weeks, and the extent of snow coverage across North America is shrinking, as well.In the end, the data does corroborate my memories. The Northeast, like many other parts of the US, truly is getting less snowy and personally, that disappoints me. For some, however, increasing temperatures may not be a bad thing. They do, after all, mean less snow shoveling and lower heating bills. Whether you like white winters or not, major changes are in store for our ecosystem.Alexandra Contosta: The snow itself is a habitat. There's this space between the snowpack and the soil. This space is an important habitat for lots of organisms, especially arthropods and insects. When we lose snow cover, we lose that habitat.Clara Alexander: Warmer conditions could also allow certain insects, including Lyme disease-carrying ticks, to live in places that were previously too cold for them.Alexandra Contosta: As we lose cold temperatures, we lose the killing temperatures that keep these insects at bay. We can see more mosquitoes that carry diseases like eastern equine encephalitis and West Nile virus.Clara Alexander: No matter where you live, weather patterns seem to be changing across the US. From drastic temperature swings, intense storms, flooding and wildfires, this season looks different from years past.Alexandra Contosta: Our winters are changing really fast, and so we're witnessing these phenomena in real time, and it's not clear who the winners and losers are in this new warmer winter world.

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Are winters getting less snowy?

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Support Provided By

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