"Philip Eden" philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom wrote in message
...
The EWSI is designed to give an idea of the snowiness of
a particular season by including frequency, quantity and
persistence, by simply adding together the daily (0900
preferably) snow-depths (in cm) for all days with a 50%
cover. A depth of less than 1cm counts as one.

I've tabulated below the totals for Luton for the last 15
years. It shows that the winter just past (which, of course,
may or may not yet be over) had an index well below
one-third of the overall mean here, notwithstanding the
frequency of snow in late-Feb and early-Mar.


Philip,

Hijacking your table below and applying the EWS Index, I
have come up with the following figures for Romsey that
show some enormous (but not overly surprising) differences
between the two locations:

Luton Romsey
1990-91 105 3
1991-92 0 0
1992-93 2 0
1993-94 31 8
1994-95 17 0
1995-96 31 36
1996-97 16 0
1997-98 1 4
1998-99 4 0
1999-2000 5 2
2000-01 39 7
2001-02 2 1
2002-03 15 0
2003-04 18 4
2004-05 17 (so far) 0 (so far, and just 2 days 50% cover)

Snowiest winters were 1962-63 (700), 1981-82 (349),
1969-70 (199), 1984-85 (176), 1978-79 (146).

At Wootton on the Isle of Wight, the two highest indices since
records began in 1974, are 66 in 1981-82, closely followed by
65 in 1986-87. The lowest figure is 0 for...well...a lot of winters
and that includes 1990-91 when Luton scored 105 !

Regards,

Nigel (Romsey, Hampshire).