Where will this winter rank? A look at N.J.‘s 10 snowiest seasons, low-snow duds

New Jersey has had its fair share of brutal winters, with huge volumes of snow piling up. It also has had plenty of duds, with very little snow falling from the sky.

Barring any unexpected blizzards, this winter season could end up ranking among the 30 least-snowy seasons in 131 years. But it won’t scrape the very bottom of the list.

Snow stats dating to the late 1890s show New Jersey has had four seasons in which the entire 160-mile-long state averaged less than 5 inches of snow. That was the grand total of the full snow season, which technically runs from Oct. 1 through April 30.

Two of those four low-snow seasons occurred during the past five winters, according to data from the office of the New Jersey State Climatologist at Rutgers.

The state averaged only 4.7 inches of snow during the 2019-2020 snow season and just 4.8 inches during the 2022-2023 season.

That doesn’t mean New Jersey is locked in a long-term trend of low-snow winters, State Climatologist David Robinson said. He believes you would need another few decades of similar snow stats to validate a legitimate trend.

For now, Robinson says our recent string of winters with below-average snow totals appears to be consistent with the state’s long-term pattern — which shows highly variable snow totals.

“If you look back over a century, you’ll see some snowier decades early on. Then lower annual/seasonal values in the 1920s into the 30s,” Robinson said.

After that, New Jersey experienced a snow “spike” in the 1960s — which turned out to be our snowiest decade — then a low-snow period in the 1980s, Robinson said.

“This century you will see considerable variability,” he said. “Some big years and some very lean years.”

Some of those “big years” weren’t necessarily brutal winters with long bouts of extreme cold and a big parade of storms, Robinson said.

In some cases, all it took was one or two blockbuster storms to push the seasonal snow totals sky high.

So far this winter, many areas of New Jersey are running about a foot below normal.

Newark has had 13.6 inches of snow since Dec. 1. Although that’s more than last winter, the city is still 11 inches below its typical snow total by late February and almost 18 inches below its normal total for the entire snow season, according to data from the National Weather Service.

In Central Jersey, the Trenton area has measured only 14.2 inches of snow so far this season, which is 7 inches below normal through late February and more than 12 inches below normal for the entire snow season.

The Atlantic City area has surprisingly picked up a little more snow than the Newark area this winter, with 13.9 inches reported. However, that’s still an inch below normal for late February and about 4 inches below normal for the full snow season.

For the entire snow season, from October through April, New Jersey normally gets an average of 26 inches of snow. That’s the average amount of snow totals from every region of the state, including the normally colder and snowier terrain in northwestern New Jersey.

So far this season, the statewide snow average has been only 15.4 inches, according to calculations from Assistant State Climatologist Mat Gerbush.

That’s about 5 inches below normal through February and 10 inches below normal for the entire snow season — which isn’t over yet.

Although our recent warm spell is expected to reverse itself as cold air returns Sunday and Monday, no snowstorms are in the forecast for the next seven days.

New Jersey has had major snowstorms during the month of March, and even some significant snow in April.

So the state’s below-average snow season isn’t locked in yet.

Current weather radar

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Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com or on X at @LensReality.