Are you someone who loves to track winter weather and compare it to previous years? Are you one like me who remembers the infamous blizzard of 1978? Do you need tips on handling winter weather issues? If any of this hits home for you, read on.
“The possibility for significant accumulating snow events still seems highly uncertain,” said Beth Hall, Director of the Indiana State Climate Office and the Midwestern Regional Climate Center. If you’re a fan of snow and love looking up climate data and trivia, she wanted to let us know of a new online tool released by the Midwestern Regional Climate Center (MRCC) a few weeks ago called, ‘The Snowfall Climatology Toolbox’. It offers an interactive way for users to look up a variety of snowfall climate information.
For example, how much snowfall is typical in a season? What is the snowiest month? What is the typical date of the first snowfall event? “Data is based on individual snowfall observation locations that have been pre-checked for high-quality data records,” she said. “There are climatologies for the most recent 30-year period as well as the full period of record for each station.” She said that some stations even have data going back to the late 1800s!
“Climate outlooks for January and the Jan-Feb-Mar period are consistently favoring above-normal precipitation amounts for Indiana,” she said. “It’s too soon to know if this will fall as rain, snow, or (yikes!) freezing rain.” She said the climate models that produce these outlooks could not agree on what the temperature should be like during these periods (i.e., above, below, or near normal), so perhaps it will be a roller coaster ride.
Find MRCC, which includes the Snowfall Climatology Toolbox, at https://mrcc.purdue.edu/.
And, with the recent winter weather and cold temperatures, the Indiana PREPared staff has compiled a variety of educational resources and outreach materials for winter weather issues.
Find information on winter weather and other weather-related issues at www.inprepared.org. Find them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/INPREPared/. They will be posting items periodically.