Vt. city has 7th-highest snow total

MONTPELIER, Vt. – Winter may have arrived late but it brought a deluge of snow.

Seventy-two inches of snow fell in Burlington from December through February, making it the seventh-snowiest winter on record, the National Weather Service in Burlington said Friday.

“We were pretty surprised,” said Brooke Tabor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Most of the snow arrived in February in at least two major storms that blanketed New England. Boston ended up with 78.2 inches during the three months, also the seventh snowiest winter on record, said Roger Hill, a private weather forecaster and consultant in Worcester.

Nearly half of Burlington’s snow – 29 inches – fell just last month.

But in other parts of Vermont and New England snowfall was well above average but far short of a record. Portland, Maine, has received 79.6 inches so far, which ties with the 39th snowiest winter on record. The average snowfall by now is 51.4 inches.

In Concord, N.H., total snowfall is 50.9 inches to date, which is about a foot more than average.

Although Burlington picked up a record snowfall, Montpelier got just 63 inches, said Hill.

“It’s a typical Swiss cheese pattern of climatology where the snow will fall in some areas and not in others,” he said.

Before February, the amount of snow in central and northeastern Vermont was dismal, he said.

“Go back before then, January and December, it was a joke. We were losing snow,” said Hill.

The city of Burlington set a record for the number of days it sent out salt trucks rather than plows because of sleet and freezing rain, he said.

Forecasters are now warning about spring flooding. With a foot of snow in the valleys and 4 to 5 feet in the higher elevations combined with ice built up on streams: “If it all melts in a couple of days the potential will be there for stream and river flooding,” said Tabor.

In the meantime, more snow is on the way. The state is locked into a fairly cold and stormy pattern for the next two weeks, said Hill.

It will take a lot for Burlington reach the six-month snow record of 145.4 inches set in the 1970-71 winter. “We’re a long ways away from that,” Tabor said.