Cordova, Alaska has had an unusual year of snowfall, immobilizing the entire city at times. One Alaskan resident said, "This is more quantity than can be handled".

Have you ever wondered how much snow would have fallen this winter if the temperature had just been a little bit colder? I went snow tubing a couple of weeks ago at Blue Mountain and just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that there was only fake snow on the slopes, and nothing below the lifts or anywhere on the entire drive up. I was wondering – where the heck is the snow! Between November 1 and now, we had a total of 7” of rain fall in the Philadelphia region. When you pair that information with the generally accepted rule of thumb that 1” of rain is equal to 10” of snow – we could have had a very heavy winter!  We believe we would have had an additional 35″-70″ of snow so far this season had the temperatures been colder. While we here in the Philadelphia region may be skating by without a lot of snow activity, other areas of the world are seeing a lot more than they are used to. For example, Central and Eastern Europe just went through the worst cold snap in 26 years – suffering temperatures of -40 degrees, where more than 600 people died as a result of the frigid conditions. Of course, no one can forget that Alaska was in a State of Emergency battling with 18’ of snow in January. Philadelphia had 71.6” of snow fall in 2010 – Alaska’s one storm was three times as much snow as our snowiest season! With Punxatawney Phil’s prediction of another 6 weeks of Winter not really shaping up – this all just goes to show that you really never can predict what Mother Nature has in store!