Northeast South Dakota is experiencing a dry winter. Aaron Dorn with the National Weather Service says the region has seen several inches of snow but the City of Aberdeen still has a snowfall deficit.
"The climatological average is 27.3 [inches]. Since October 1st, we are at 18.8 inches of snow, and that's still a departure from normal of 8.5 inches below the normal,” Dorn says.
Watertown and Sisseton have also had less snowfall than normal.
Dorn says he and his colleagues in the Aberdeen office wanted to know how this winter compared to past seasons. He says forecasters chose a ten-inch snow depth to help them in their efforts. Dorn says they determined it has been 1,778 days and counting since more than ten inches of snow was on the ground at the Aberdeen airport.
"That's the second most. Ranked number one is a length of days over 2,000 days long. Going back to a stretch between mid-March of 2001 and the end of February 2007. But, how does that compare to other periods where we've had similar situations? Well, you know, there's quite a number of time periods lasting multiple years where we've had this situation here where's it's a snow depth of less than 10 inches for a long time. The tenth longest period of time is more than a thousand days, and we're at more than one thousand seven hundred days," Dorn says. ?
Weather records for Aberdeen go back to 1900. Officials with the Climate Prediction Center say the beginning of March might bring colder and wetter conditions to the region.