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This year just happens to be luck of the draw I suppose. For some reason, South Jersey has really been getting hit, and North Jersey hasn’t gotten much of anything. Tomorrow, we’re getting a coating to an inch.
Our climate only averages 25-30 inches of snow, less than 25 as you go down the shore and closer to 40 up in Sussex county. You're going to get some dud years with how difficult it is to thread the needle for a major snowstorm in our area.
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Exactly - even here in central New England, snowfall has been well below normal. Cold stretches with no precipitation followed by a warmup and rain. A lot more rain storms than snowstorms. So how could New Jersey have any hope? Everything has to go right in my location for there to be a decent snowstorm - not too far east, not too far west, not too much cold high pressure which suppresses the storm to the south, etc. Once again, it can only get worse the further south one goes. The NY / NJ tri-state area is not the right place for consistent winter snowfall. You’re too far south along the Atlantic coast. That’s why. Long Island can see big snowstorms more often for the same reasons as coastal New England. But more often than not it is just rain over there.
I think that the weather patters have shifted, several times, over the last 50-60 years. For what it's worth, I was born in Perth Amboy in the early 50s, and from what I was told, and what I saw, there was very little, if any snowfall, in that area. A few years later, we moved to the Lancaster, PA area, and got a little bit of snow, during the 3 winters we lived there.
Then, in 1958, we moved to the Rochester, NY area, and what a difference! Rochester is in the "snow belt", and even though there have been ebbs and flows, over the last 60 years, we still get close to 10 feet of snowfall every year. I keep in touch with my relatives in NJ, and from what they tell me, the state has also seen some significant snowfall, over the years, but it's been more prevalent in the last 10-12 years.
I remember this happening a long time ago, back in the early 80s, I think, when I was still living with my parents. Just before I left for work (4PM to midnight shift), my mother asked me to dial up my aunt in NJ. I expected my aunt to answer the phone, and I was going to chat for a moment, but instead my cousin answered the call. She was a teacher, and she should have been at school, not at her mother's house.
I asked what was going on, and she said the schools were closed, due to snow. That surprised me, as to the best of my knowledge, NJ at that time was still somewhat "snow free". I asked how much snow they got, and she replied, "We got just over an inch". I burst out laughing, and she asked what was so funny. "I replied, "The schools were closed due to an inch of snow"?? She said, "Yeah, what do you do in Rochester, when there's that much snow"? I replied, "We're in the snow belt, we're used to it, and we slow down to 55"...............
I remember as a kid (in the 80s Monmouth County) some winters we'd get multiple snow days and a few winters we got none. My grandparents lived in Ocean County. Sometimes they'd get way more snow than they did. Some winters Barnegat Bay would freeze over but most winters it didn't.
In February 2010 we had back to back blizzards in Philly that dumped around 3 ft. of snow. The following winter was really mild with hardly any snow. Polar vortices aside much of the winter weather on the east coast seems to be strongly influenced by El Nino/La Nina.
I’m definitely thinking about it, as we got a dud once again today. 12-18” up in Maine and most of northern New England. 1-2” here which already stopped. This is just not the area for people who enjoy heavy snow, mostly due to the exact location and weather patterns.
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