1000 x 90

Ray’s Weather ‘Halftime’ Snow Totals – Boone: 11.1 inches; Beech Mountain: 37.6 inches; & Sugar: 44 inches

image004-1
Courtesy: Ray’s Weather Center

By Jesse Wood

Jan. 30, 2014. When Feb. 1 arrives, the High Country will have reached its “climatological ‘halftime’ in snow totals,” as Ray’s Weather Center noted in its – as always – informative, accurate and entertaining forecasts at RaysWeather.com.

That means that half of the snow that whites the High Country in an average winter falls before Feb. 1 and the remaining half falls after February begins. Essentially, the point of the post was that winter is not over for those that thought the forecasted warmer days ahead signaled the end of Old Man Winter for 2013-2014.

Photo by Ken Ketchie
A man blows snow off of sidewalks at ASU in January. Photo by Ken Ketchie

That, however, is not the case, and anybody residing in the High Country for any significant amount of time, knows that plenty of cold weather and snow is on the way – no matter what the winning woolly worm says. 

For the first two weeks of winter, Tommy Burleson, official festival forecaster of the 36th annual Woolly Worm Festival in Banner Elk last October, was right with the average-cold-wet-snow-and-rain forecast of winning worm Fuzz’s brown and black backside.

But, the Fuzz sort of missed that January in 2014 would be among the coldest Januaries on record, dating back at least to the 1930s. The past month has been anything but average or above average in terms of temperature. But while it has been extremely cold, that hasn’t translated to an over abundance of snow.

So far at “halftime,” Sugar Mountain has received 44 inches of snow during the ongoing winter of 2013-14; Beech Mountain has received 37.6 inches of snow; and Boone has 11.1 inches of snow.

Check below to see how these figures compare to the snow totals in the most recent years past. The 2013-14 totals are as of Jan. 30. Snow reports are listed under the “Almanac” tab at RaysWeather.com, which is quite a resource for those residing in Western North Carolina. 

Boone:

  • 2013-14: 11.1 inches
  • 2012-13: 36.1 inches
  • 2011-12: 13.7 inches

Beech Mountain:

  • 2013-14: 37.6 inches
  • 2012-13: 104.9 inches
  • 2011-12: 48.7 inches

Sugar Mountain:

  • 2013-14: 44 inches
  • 2012-13: 120 inches
  • 2011-12: 48.5 inches