Historic Snowfall and Snow Depth

A data-forward exploration of historic snowfall and snow depth across 5,000 cities in the United States.
Created By: Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider, Angie Cheng, Katy Miles, Karle Flanagan, and Emily Crawford

Introduction and Motivation

While chatting with friends each winter, I frequently hear that "it used to snow in October and the snow would stick around until April". Through an extensive amount of searching, we found there was no accessible and data-forward display of historical snow data across the United States for every city. This visualization was created to allow for any reader to explore the historical snow record for 5,000 cities across the United States.

I find it interesting to explore stories of blizzards and other major snow events. For example, here in Urbana, IL, locals speak of "the blizzard of 1979". This visualization shows that year had two full months of snow cover -- but was followed by a year of almost no snow. If you search for Chicago, they had it even worse!

This visualization is updated every week during winter with the latest data from the official National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data sources.

Enjoy! :)

Choose Your Location

Location:

Overview of Recent Winters

Daily Snowfall Data from Champaign, IL

This visualization displays the daily snow depth and new snow recorded by the NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information from the observation site ().
  • Mouseover or tap any element to view detailed information. (This visualization is highly interactive!)
  • When the observation has no data for a given date, a red background is used. Additional details are available in the mouseover.
  • You can also view other weather stations around :
Scale:
Legend: New Snowfall (light blue) Snow Depth (white⟹grey)