It was a season packed with action, characterized by slippery roads, burst pipes, strained plow crews, and much more.

All of this can be put onto the shoulders of Old Man Winter. The season usually comes with large impacts, marked by bitter chills and large-scale snowstorms; though this season, which has just passed, felt a lot different than others as of late.

Meteorological winter, whose season runs from December 1 to February 28, has just come to an end. These dates are used to make the season "uniform" both in terms of time and date, for stat-keeping purposes. We’ve still got some time until meteorological spring, which starts at the Vernal Equinox on the morning of March 20.

Meteorological winter got off to a jumpstart when a system moved in from the southeast, dropping just over 5 inches at the Youngstown-Warren Regional airport. More rounds of snow, plus some lake-effect flurries, got our yearly snowfall up to about 13 inches by the halfway point of the month. Sixteen straight days to open up the month featured an average temperature below average, allowing most of our precipitation events to result in snow.  After this, temperatures perked up closer to the holidays. With a few days in the 50s before the 25th, the Valley failed to have a white Christmas. The month ended as it started, however, with a decent hit of snow right before the ball dropped into 2026.

 

 

After a few days of chill to ring in 2026, there was a sustained stretch of about a week or so where temperatures knocked out our snowpack again. Widespread rain fell on January 9th and 10th, dealing the finishing blow. By mid-month, however, temperatures began to plunge well below normal, with single-digits being recorded for the first time in the calendar year on January 15th.

 

 

By the latter third of the month, temperatures began to regularly fall below zero. A low temperature of -7°F was observed on January 23rd, with another bone-chillingly cold morning on January 24th; the low that day was -8°F. These frigid temperatures acted to snarl preparations for a major winter storm that hit our area. The cross-country storm dropped snow all the way from the Southwest to New England, with anomalously high totals falling in our viewing area. The snow, starting just after midnight, dropped 10.1” at the airport, though snowfall got above a foot in many locales south and east of Youngstown. The snowpack stayed put to end the month as the last four or five nights dropped below zero.

 

 

February started no different. Another clipper system dropped an additional 2-4 inches across the region between February 6th and 7th. A low temperature of -13°F was recorded on February 9; this not only makes it the coldest of the season, but the coldest temperature at all since 2015. The Valley gradually warmed up by mid-month, however, causing the snowpack to melt. Around this time, rain or snow was hard to come by; it wasn’t until February 18th that our first raindrops in over a month fell. Another low-pressure system brought around a quarter of an inch of rainfall on the 20th.

By the end of the month, the area settled into a much more seasonable pattern. The Valley got “nickel-and-dimed” by several systems and clippers, though there were no impactful bouts of chill or snow.

Throughout the entire season, the airport’s average temperature was 29.3°F. Each day's observed high and low temperatures are taken into account. This is 4.1°F below the average wintertime temperature of 33.4°F. The season as a whole registered as the coldest since the winter of 2014-15.

 

 

Snowfall during the three-month winter block accumulated 46.1”. While still just barely below average, this total is the greatest winter season snowfall total the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport has seen since the 2020-21 season. Snowfall, however, is typically calculated from its first occurrence to last occurrence; this total as of March 3rd is up to 52.6”, shy of 4” below average.

 

 

While seasonal snowfall is at a five-year peak, the same cannot be said for liquid-equivalent precipitation. 5.57” of liquid-equivalent water fell during the season, over three inches below average. This contrast to our high snowfall totals depicts how cold our season was, with most precipitation events falling as snow. Even in snowfall events, the region had very little wet snowfall; most events, including the snowstorm in late January, produced dry, fluffy snow, which does not melt as much liquid.

One index, the Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index (AWSSI), aims to objectively quantify the severity of local winters and compare it with other years. The index runs on a “point” system, with each point earned by the achievement of a specific variable or amount. These variables are the high temperature, low temperature, daily snowfall, and recorded snow depth. A season with a higher cumulative point total would be regarded as a more “severe” season. As of March 1, the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport has accumulated 692 points, placing it just into “extreme” classification- more severe than 80% of past area winters in the index’s database.

 

 

While “extreme” winters beat four of five all-time, this particular winter has beaten each of the last ten years. Half of these years finished “mild”, while only one was ever characterized as “extreme” at any point after the New Year- that being the 2017-18 season, finishing as “severe”. You can read more on AWSSI and its system here.

This will be a winter to remember, especially for those who are young. In terms of temperature and snowfall, we haven’t seen a winter this severe in around 10 years or so. While the days of sub-zero temperatures and blockbuster snowstorms are gone until the next winter season, winter-like conditions may re-emerge around mid-month, after an anomalously mild start to March.