NOAA Map: Who Gets the Most Snow in The Northeast USA

SnowBrains | | Post Tag for WeatherWeather
NOAA's official annual snowfall averages for the northeastern USA.
NOAA’s official annual snowfall averages for the northeastern USA.

We love this kind of no nonsense reporting by NOAA.  Why don’t they do this more often?  Where is the map like this for the rest of the country?

We’ve often wondered who gets the most snow in the Northeast.  Now, we know from the most reliable weather source in the USA and perhaps Earth.

We all know we can’t trust ski resort numbers, but generally, that’s all we have.

According to ski resort numbers, Jay Peak in Vermont gets the most snow in the Northeast claiming that they average 380 inches of snowfall per year.

Rob Fox, November 2011, Jay Peak. photo: Tim Fater
Rob Fox, November 2011, Jay Peak. photo: Tim Fater

According to the NOAA snowfall map at the top of this article, New York averages the most snow by far in their lake-effect snow zone.  This is where they got that huge storm that dropped up to 88″ of snow 5 days last year and there are ski resorts in this zone.

New Hampshire also has one spot on the NOAA map with pink, signifying above 200″ of annual snowfall.  It appears that that location correlates with no ski resorts but is near the Brenton Woods ski area.

There is definitely some purple areas in Vermont that indicate high snowfall and some of them correlate with Jay Peak, Bolton Valley, and Stowe.

Ski areas of New England map.
Ski areas of New England map.

You Easter Coasters know better than we do, which ski resorts fall in these pink and purple zones in the NOAA map?


Related Articles

3 thoughts on “NOAA Map: Who Gets the Most Snow in The Northeast USA

  1. Grant is right. The peaks of the Green Mountain spine are too small to really show up on this map. That doesn’t mean that Jay Peak gets less snow than Snow Ridge in Turin NY.

  2. Jay Peak definitely gets a ton of snow along with Stowe, Smugglers’ Notch, Bolton Valley, Sugarbush, & Mad River Glen. All towards northern/northeast VT.

    I remember when around 2008/2009 I woke up to over 4 feet of fresh POW at Sugarbush Resort in Waitsfield VT.

  3. haha welcome back to winter guys. So the blip in New Hampshire with over 200 inches. That’s a little place called Mt Washington 🙂

    Jay Peak wouldn’t really register on a map of this scale because most of their extra snow comes from a microclimate created by orographic lift and the fact that Jay is a Manadnock (one of the only big peaks in the middle of nowhere). This usually adds a few inches every storm and every few days which does add up over the course of a winter. The 380″ number is probably a bit generous, but they definitely get more snow than anyone else in the Northeast.

Got an opinion? Let us know...