Snowfall Records and Top Winter Weather Events

DEM Blogger

March 10, 2014

As we (hopefully) close the books on the winter of 2013-2014, it’s time to reflect on the weather we’ve seen – and perhaps to put it in perspective. We had several weather events that could have been much worse than they were, including last week’s winter storm that, at one point, looked like it was going to rival the 2009 ice storm. Fortunately, we’ve avoided blizzards and ice storms this year, and the impacts to our community have been relatively minor (please don’t tell Fayette County Public Schools we said that).

The National Weather Service has a massive amount of weather data, stretching back as far as 1830 for some locations. Today, we’d like to share a couple of pages where they’re compiled and presented some highlights of those data sets. The first is a set of tables showing annual, monthly, and daily snowfall records for Lexington. The second is a summary of the top ten winter weather events for our region.

Some of our long-serving colleagues at DEM still shudder when the topic of the 2003 ice storm comes up in our office. Thankfully, no one here today was working in civil defense (the predecessor to emergency management) when spring failed to appear in March of 1960. It’s an interesting set of weather history – check it out!

(The photo above is from that NWS history page, too. It’s a race at Keeneland during the spring snow of April 2007!)