Statistically speaking, this winter hasn’t been that bad

PORTLAND – This winter has been bitter cold and accompanied by winds that cut to the core. And the snow? The state got pounded. Just look at all of the piles. Surely, this must be a winter for the record books.

Not so fast!

The heaps of snow, prolonged cold snaps and nasty wind chills may have worn people down, but this winter won’t go down in the record books as either the coldest or the snowiest, officials say.

“It’s fairly cold but it wasn’t a record,” said meteorologist Tom Hawley of the National Weather Service, who was unimpressed by all that Mother Nature dished out. “I didn’t think it was that cold.”

Officially, it’ll go down as the 12th-coldest winter in Portland since the National Weather Service started keeping records 63 years ago, Hawley said. And the snowfall is likely to be below average by the time April arrives.

To the north, it was the eighth-coldest in the 60 years records have been kept in Caribou, and it seemed even colder if you took into account all of those days with wind chill advisories, said Mark Bloom, a meteorologist in Caribou.

In Portland, it was the coldest winter since 1993-94, as measured from December through February, officials said.

It seemed a rarity that the temperature rose above freezing, sending some people to the edge of their endurance. But Tim Sample, the Maine humorist, said people like to complain about harsh winters. It’s all part of living in Maine, he said.

“We take pleasure in commiserating about how bad it was,” he said. But Sample, who lives in Bath, admitted that the unrelenting cold spells were a test even for natives like himself.

One person who was pleased with the cold weather was Peter Geiger, editor of the Farmers’ Almanac, which predicted a cold and snowy winter. Last week, he was trying not to gloat too much about his accurate prediction.

“I’m getting e-mails every day from people saying, ‘Make it stop. Make it go away,”‘ Geiger said from Lewiston.

The level of snowfall depends on where you live. In southern Maine, it was an average snowfall.

Through March 12, Portland had 57 inches of snow, which was slightly above average. But in the end, it will likely be below normal because no snow is forecast for the immediate future, Hawley said.

In western Maine, there was less snow than usual. Eustis, which usually gets about 140 inches of snow, had recorded only 67 inches, he said.

In northern Maine, there was plenty of snow, thanks in part to a February blizzard that prompted a disaster declaration by President Bush, freeing up federal money to assist in the cleanup.

Some parts of Aroostook County were hit by more than 2 feet of snow from Feb. 2 to Feb. 4. In Caribou, the season’s snowfall tally was 107.3 inches, which is about a foot above normal.

Sample has a theory about the cold weather. He thinks a solid dose of winter is healthy. “It gives us some sense of solidarity. It’s this sense that ‘we’re all in this together,”‘ he said.

And there are additional challenges ahead: thick ice, snow cover and deep frost will create another Maine tradition in the coming weeks.

“This coming mud season will be the mother of all mud seasons,” Sample said.