On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 7:23:56 PM UTC, John Hall wrote:
In article , Scott W writes: Further to Dave Cornwell's comment a few weeks back that people mostly remember a winter through the amount of days with snow lying I decided to use the data I produced for my winter forecast and try to find out what snow cover has been like in my area going back to 1946/47 - the first year of the original snow survey. I then divided the snow lying days by the winter mean to give the index. I realise there is the work of Bonacina to consider but as this is national I wanted to look more indepth That's very interesting. Thanks for going to the trouble of producing it. If snow cover is the main interest, then why divide the number of days with lying snow by the mean temperature? Because the mean for 1962-3 was 0.2C and that for 1946-7 was 1.3C, the division massively inflates the index for 1962-3 compared to the earlier winter. (And what would you have done if the mean for 1962-3 had come out negative, as it very nearly did? [Added later: Having now read the follow-ups, I see that Norman has made the same point, only rather better.] There was snow lying through much of the first two weeks of March in 1946-7. It looks as though that is included in the number of days of snow lying, but how is the winter mean value defined (and the winter rainfall total)? Was that the mean for the "traditional" three months of DJF? If so then it seems inconsistent. I'm surprised that 2010-11 doesn't make the top 20, given how cold and snowy December 2010 was over much of the country. -- John Hall "He crams with cans of poisoned meat The subjects of the King, And when they die by thousands G.K.Chesterton: Why, he laughs like anything." from "Song Against Grocers"

Hello John,

I have modified the spreadsheet and used Kelvin instead of mean temp. I have divided snow lying by average mean Kelvin then multiplied by 100 to give it a chunky figure.
The temperature stats refer to the meteorological winter - December, January, February. The snowfall stats refer to October to May. I realise this is not consistent but I was merely trying to give a 'perception' of each winter. One could argue that I should include temp stats and rainfall to go with the snowfall data ie October to May - but then this would introduce its own inconsistencies in not being 'meteorological winter'. With a couple of exceptions all my snowfall occurs December to March. Further feedback welcomed.

Here is a link to the new spreadsheet
http://sdrv.ms/1hZwtkG