First day of 2013 sets snow record in America

STATE COLLEGE, Pennsylvania – The first day of 2013 marked the widest coverage of snow the US has seen on January 1 in the past 10 years.

STATE COLLEGE, Pennsylvania – The first day of 2013 marked the widest coverage of snow the US has seen on January 1 in the past 10 years. In a report from AccuWeather, it was stated that 67 percent of the contiguous US is covered by snow right now.

The previous record was set in 2010, when the New Year saw 61 percent of the US beneath snow. That same season was marked by the blizzard nicknamed โ€œSnowmageddon,โ€ in the mid-Atlantic, which set a long list of records in cities such as Philadelphia, DC, and Baltimore.

“As far as New Year’s days go, I think that our snow cover is very healthy,” AccuWeather.com expert, Senior Meteorologist Jack Boston, said.

The lack of snow coverage since record keeping began in 2004, with the exception of 2010, has been an anomaly, Boston explained.

“The temperature of the North Atlantic Ocean has been in a warm cycle and that has resulted in eastern North America, on average, having milder temperatures during the last decade.”

Despite a few local locations, most of the contiguous US was above normal in snow coverage for the month of December as well.

The percentage of coverage differs drastically between the two months, however.

December 1 saw 13 percent coverage across the contiguous US – a 53 percentage point difference from January 1.

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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