2008 winter highlights - Snow Business Magazine

The snow season began with a significant storm on Oct. 22, 2007, dumping up to a foot of snow in Yellowstone Park and the mountains of northern Colorado.
On Nov. 5-7, an arctic front triggered the first notable lake effect snows with over 12 inches across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and up to 8 inches or more near Erie and areas south of Buffalo.
On Nov. 21-25, through the Thanksgiving weekend, the season's first large winter storms in the central U.S. swept across the southern Great Plains to the Great Lakes leaving a wide swath of snow. The storm continued across southern Ontario and Quebec with up to a foot across Ontario's Cottage Country.
A few days later as a series of storms developed, beginning in the Southwest and eventually moving off the Northeast coast, nearly the entire country was affected. The storms between Nov. 30-Dec. 3 produced high winds in the Pacific Northwest, considerable snow accumulations, up to 4 feet in the San Juan Mountains of Southwestern Colorado, and significant icing through the Great Plains and Upper Midwest. Overall these storms caused as many as a half a million people to lose power. The storm dropped 1-2 feet of snow across Northern New England and Quebec as it further intensified across the Canadian Maritimes.
The next series of storms followed on Dec. 10-11, taking a similar track through the nation's mid-section encasing parts of the Plains in as much as 2 inches of ice. Hardest hit areas were in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. More than 1 million people, (600,000 in Oklahoma) lost power and 38 people died. It was the worst ice storm in Oklahoma history.
The same storm brought heavy snows to the upper Midwest and Great Lakes. Beginning late-evening rush hour on Dec. 12, the first of three heavy storms slammed into New England during the next 7-8 days. More than half of Boston's entire 50-in. snowfall occurred during this one week; and by Dec. 17, Boston had already eclipsed the prior season's snowfall total.
Snow storms pounded the Rockies and Cascades several times during January and early February. The mountain snow pack grew to levels well above normal by early February. During January alone, 170 inches of snow fell at the Alta ski area near Salt Lake City, Utah - more than twice the normal amount for the month and eclipsing the previous record of 168 inches (1967).
Early January storms produced wind gusts to near 100 mph along the Pacific Northwest, and in the mountains south of Lake Tahoe, as much as 10 feet of snow piled up in three days.
A Jan. 31 storm followed the established La Nina track from Texas to the St. Lawrence Valley, bringing more heavy snows to parts of the Midwest and northern New England and a swatch of ice across the central Appalachians. This storm brought much of the Chicago area its heaviest one-day storm of the season.
The upper Midwest and Western Great Lakes, along with northern New England, were hardest hit in February with three major storms in three weeks. By the end of the month parts of Wisconsin had broken their seasonal snowfall records, northern New England was approaching its all-time record and Boston had its wettest February ever. Between Feb. 19-20 in Oswego County, NY, a raging Lake Effect blizzard dumped 49 inches of snow in Pulaski.
March, which usually signals a return to spring, exhibited a continued aggressive winter pattern with a slight shift in the storm track to the east. This transferred the axis of heaviest snows from the Upper Midwest to the Ohio Valley. Although much of the East Coast remained wet and in many areas received no snow at all, Northern New England got hammered.
The most notable storm of the winter season developed on March 7-10, severely impacting much of the Midwest. The storm impacted areas from south-central Texas through Arkansas, with more than a foot of snow in areas. It hit hardest in Ohio, where the 20.5 inches of snow that fell in Columbus was the city's greatest single snowfall event.
The only April showers of significance were show showers ,when portions of Wisconsin and Minnesota to South Dakota saw two storms on April 25-26 that brought snowfall totals of over a foot in many locations.
The Blizzard of May 1-2 brought a climactic end to the winter season as it blasted mainly areas of Wyoming and South Dakota with near-80 mph winds, zero-visibility whiteouts and over a foot of snow in Rapid City. In less than three days in early May, the town of Lead in Lawrence County, SD, was buried under 50-plus inches of snow.