Winter 2001-02 Review

Winter 2001-02 was rather remarkable. After an early start, there was snow in October, winter went back into hiding. There was very little snow before Christmas with near record warmth in November and much of December. There were signs of an incipient El Nino in the Pacific. The weather finally got colder the last week of December. A blast of lake effect snow that started near Bufflao drifted into the area and caught the Lake Erie lake shore from Mentor to Ashtabula to Erie, PA with 2 to 3 feet of snow! An extended period of colder weather finally arrived late in February and hung around in March. Most locations outside of the snowbelt nearly doubled their meager snowfall totals during this time period. Winter left one last gasp though, as some late season snow and sleet was reported on May 21st, 2002. In the end, seasonal snowfall totals were not much more than half of normal. The only exception was the lake shore that had the big late December lake effect snow. These areas ended up with near normal seasonal snowfall. Overall winter temperatures averaged 4-5 degrees warmer than normal. A nice savings on the winter heating bills.

Summary of Snowfall at Climate Sites
2001-'2002	Oct 01	Nov 01	Dec 01	Jan 02	Feb 02	Mar 02	Apr 02	May 02	Total 2001-02
Toledo	T	0.0	1.2	2.5	3.9	11.4	T	0.0	19.0
Mansfield	0.0	0.0	5.2	5.1	10.9	9.6	1.5	0.0	32.3
Cleveland	1.0	T	3.5	6.3	16.9	15.9	2.2	T	45.8
Akron-Canton	T	T	1.6	5.7	8.0	6.4	2.2	0.0	23.9
Youngstown	1.6	0.3	2.4	12.7	14.7	10.6	0.8	T	43.1
Erie PA	2.4	T	37.1	16.1	17.4	31.1	0.9	0.0	105.0