Snowfall records at Fort Wayne. Comparison of Last Winter to other Winters

As all of you probably, the winter of 2010-2011 was a very snowy season here in Northwest Ohio and Northeast Indiana.  At one point in the winter you might've actually thought that we must be breaking snowfall records.  Well, I'm here to tell you that you were right.  According to the National Weather Service's last publication of snowfall for each year since 1943, with seasonal and July through June snowfall records back to 1941, the year 2011 has had 35.7 inches of snow, which is actually right near the average of 35.1 inches.  The reason for this is because in March, Fort Wayne is expected to receive approximately 6.3 inches of snow, but this March we had only 1.2 inches and that occurred right after a storm system brought heavy rainfall to the area on March 6.  In April, we didn't even see a trace of snow, which further brought snowfall totals down for the year.  Even though it seemed like a snowy winter, in reality the snowfall for this year is only just above normal.  It is likely though, according to what long-range meteorologists are predicting for December, we could have quite a bit of snow during the month, closer to 15 inches, which is much above the normal of 7.4 inches for December.  This will probably lead snow totals for this year to near 50 inches which we haven't seen in at least 15 years.  If you look at the snow totals another way such as total snowfall from July of one year to June of the next year.  This way you can get accurate snowfall totals for the entire winter season.  This July through June period we had an amazing 46.5 inches of snow, which the last time we had this much snow it was in 2002, and even then they had 46.7 inches of snow.  Before that, it has been since 1983-84 that we have seen this much snow, with 49.1 inches of snow falling throughout the season.  Another measure of snowfall is the winter total snowfall, where the months that snowfall is logged in is December, January, and February, the core winter months.  Last winter season, Fort Wayne logged 45.3 inches of snow, which means that most of last winter's snow fell during the core winter months.  What this means with global warming will be discussed in later article, but I will tell you this that if nearly 98% of our yearly snowfall is falling in only three months, that means that 9 out of the 12 months of the year here at Fort Wayne are getting warmer, but the core winter months are getting colder.  Anyway, back to the point, this 45.3 inches snow that fell during the winter months was the third greatest snowfall during these three months in Fort Wayne's history, behind the winter of 1977-1978 (49.3 inches) and the winter of 1981-1982 (61.2 inches).  According to my forecast, and many other meteorologists' forecasts, I believe that next winter, we may have even more snowfall than last winter, especially in the months of January and February.  According to some meteorologists, we may have some blockbuster storms this winter which could be much like the 2011 Groundhog Day Blizzard, not just one of them, but two or even three of them.  This winter could be even worse than last winter, which would be almost unimaginable.
If you want to know more about snowfall during past winters at Fort Wayne, visit this link: Snowfall Fall records at Fort Wayne; and then click on "Fort Wayne snowfall records" and you will find a PDF document that tells you past snowfall information.