3 Things Are True About the Winter of 2022–2023

The winter of 2022–2023 is ending. How did it measure up where you live?

The author, left, celebrates the end of a mild winter by hanging up her shovel, while her winter-loving AWSSI collaborator, Dr. Steve Hilberg, basks in the glory of the kind of wintry weather he prefers.

The beginning and end of winter is defined in many different ways, but for meteorologists and climatologists, it is tied to the calendar months — December, January, and February. It’s the season now for winter recap articles, even though we know that wintry conditions can and will blanket parts of the U.S. yet this season. The Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index (AWSSI) provides a measuring stick to assess how severe winter has been across the country. The rating at each site is relative to its own climatology, so a “severe” winter in Oklahoma has a lot less snow and cold than a “severe” winter in Minnesota, but it’s severe for where it is. The AWSSI rankings are based on daily maximum and minimum temperatures, snowfall, and snow depth, tallied up through the season from the start of winter conditions to the end.

With a hat tip to the potential for more springtime snows, let’s recap 3 takeaways from this winter!

1. East Coast vs West Coast

The Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index (AWSSI) as of March 1, 2023. Red circles indicate that conditions this winter rank in the mildest 20% of winters, while purple circles indicate that conditions this winter rank in the most extreme 20% of winters. Diamonds are records mildest or extreme. For more information, visit the Midwestern Regional Climate Center website, where rankings are updated daily.

How you experienced the winter of 2022–2023 depends strongly on where you lived. Like 1990s hip hop music, it was a battle between the coasts.

West Coast: Ice Cube cold. Especially in the Pacific Northwest to Great Basin, AWSSI winter severity ranks average to severe to extreme. Temperatures have been running cold, and in the mountains, snow is deep this winter. The severe to extreme conditions extend across the northern Rockies to the Dakotas and Minnesota, where the storm track has brought repeated snows and bouts of cold.

East Coast: Like Jay-Z, some like it hot. Winter conditions are mild to moderate from the Michigan to Missouri to Texas and east to the coast, including numerous sites that are on track to set record mild AWSSI rankings this year. Even Buffalo, New York, where a fall blizzard paralyzed the city and another batch of snow blanketed the city near Christmas, has otherwise had only slow accumulation this winter and currently ranks in the moderate category.