Brains
Have you ever looked outside when it’s raining and thought “if it was just colder, it would be snowing.” If you love snow sports, then you probably have.
The picture above from meteorologist Joe Lauria answers the question of how much snow would fall if all precipitation fell as snow. The results are pretty impressive.
Most impressive is the Pacific Northwest where some places would get over 1,000 inches per year. Mt Baker, WA, actually recorded over that amount one winter and is still the most snow ever recorded on earth.
Also impressive is the Gulf Coast area as well as almost the entire eastern half of the United States.
One interesting observation is the western US would generally get less total snowfall than the rest of the country in this hypothetical scenario. However, the mountains in these areas tend to get the most actual snowfall.
This would be more interesting if the data were presented by month or season. The reason the south and east get more rain is related to hot, humid weather in the summer. I would have liked to see the same info for just winter months when there is an actual chance for colder temps. Also, there should be a mention of the snow ratios used…was it the same for the whole country? If so, then this is just a map of annual rainfall with the scale changed.