Winter hasn’t ignored D.C. region this year

WASHINGTON — The snow drought of yesteryear has been replaced with an overdose of winter from the East Coast to the Midwest.

Much of the Washington area has seen above-average snowfall so far this season, thanks, in large part, to the pre-Valentine’s Day snowstorm.

The official winter snow total at Washington Dulles International Airport stands at 31 inches; the normal seasonal snowfall is 22 inches. Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport has recorded 25.7 inches so far.

At Ronald Reagan National Airport, the 15.5 inches of snow that has fallen so far this season marks the first time it has attained at least a normal winter snow total since the record-breaking winter of 2009-2010.

Many locales in northwestern Virginia and upstate Maryland saw much more snow from December snowstorms that were otherwise near misses or wash-outs for the inner suburbs.

Below is a chart showing the day-to-day snowfalls for meteorological winter at Dulles International Airport and Reagan National Airport as of Feb. 19, 2014.

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The majority of the region’s snow has fallen courtesy of three storms that occurred on Jan. 2, Jan. 21, and Feb. 13. (WTOP/Dave Dildine)

The greatest contributors to D.C.’s high snow tallies were last week’s snowstorm that dropped around a foot of snow on most of the area and the Tuesday, Jan. 21, snowstorm that produced generally between 4 and 10 inches of snow.

Winter has been crueler to the New England and the Midwest. Philadelphia is in the midst of its third snowiest winter on record.

New York City has seen 57.1 inches of snow. Chicago has seen more than 5.5 feet of snow.

As forcefully as it fell, the latest round of winter weather is quickly melting away. Flood watches and warnings are in effect for rapid snow melt across the Upper Midwest and upstate New York as unusually warm temperatures surge northward ahead of a weather system that may spawn severe thunderstorms over the next few days.

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