It happened: on April 10th we had a nice, big, spring snowstorm. Hopefully everyone enjoyed all of the "second-winter" Hobbit jokes, but how unusual are April snowstorms?
April Snow
In May we average another 5cm. That can vary from snowless Mays like 2016-2017 and 2011-2013, to 2020 with 4cm, 2015 with 12cm, 2010 with 28cm or all the way to May 2003 with 38cm.
If this April 10th storm really is our final snow for the year it would be the earliest final snowfall at the International since 1998.
Blatchford doesn't record snowfall anymore, but on April 10, 2021 the International recorded 4.2cm of snow. If that is all the snow that we get during this month then this April would be a bottom-20 year at the International.
But when do we typically have our final snowfall for the year?I'm sure that no one really wants to hear this, but from the past 10 winters the average date of the final snow is...May 1st. (this chart shows the 10-year average as April 25th because it's including 2021's April 10th in the calculation, but without 2021 it falls back to May 1st.)
In both 2020 and 2019 it was on May 4th, in 2018 it pretty early on April 16th, and both 2017 and 2016 were April 24th. And then a year like 2011 was really late on May 13th.
Spring Snowstorms
Our April 10th storm was 4.2cm, and so for comparison this chart shows every 4cm+ storm for April and May. This year's storm is the small~ish bubble furthest to the right.
Large April storms are pretty common, and they might drop-off a little bit after mid-April, but they don't really disappear until after the first week of May. And even then sometimes we will get big storms in mid-May, or even in late-May like the 7.8cm we got in 2010 on May 29.
So enjoy this second-winter. But keep in mind that there could be a third or fourth yet to come.
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