Triple the average snowfall

Although last weekend’s storm that blanketed the area with 19.5 inches of snow isn’t the largest total in Culpeper’s recorded history, it’s certainly one for the ages.

And so is the winter of 2009-10.

The National Weather Service has recorded about 50 inches of snow for Culpeper County since Dec. 5. In an average year, the county sees about 17 inches.

And the season isn’t over yet. Weather forecasters are calling for yet another seven to 14 inches of snow by this afternoon, with the possibility of more this weekend.

Finding official accumulations for Culpeper can be a difficult task, as the NWS, which relies on trained volunteers in thousands of locations across the country, hasn’t officially maintained yearly snowfall totals for the town since 1990 — the last year a cooperative observer was based here.

The NWS has observation stations in Boston, Va., and Remington, but those stations did not report snowfall totals during the most recent storm.

Without an official observer in the town of Culpeper, the NWS must rely on untrained weather spotters to call in snowfall results. Those results are available for a short time online but are not archived.

Despite a 20-year gap in the official books, NWS record-keeping for the town was extensive from 1907 to 1990, when the Culpeper Cooperative Observer Network station recorded and submitted data. During those 83 years, the last largest recorded snowfall over 24 hours in the town of Culpeper was 18 inches Feb. 7, 1936 and Jan. 28, 1922.

But Saturday’s storm and the Dec. 19 storm both surpassed those numbers, each coming in at 19.5 inches.

As for other major snow events throughout the town’s history, local historian and newspaper reporter Donnie Johnston devotes a chapter to the topic in his 2004 book “Culpeper: A 20th Century History.”

Johnston has collected and maintained his own exhaustive records over the years as well as flipping through old Star-Exponent articles.

“Because every time you went to look for anything, you could never find it,” said the longtime reporter and local historian. “I did it so that we would have all of the records in one place.”

According to Johnston, the worst storms of the past 50 years took place in 2003, 1996, 1987, 1983, 1966 and 1962.

But he describes the February blizzard of 1899 as legendary and the worst in Culpeper’s recorded history. That storm dumped between 40 and 50 inches of snow, crippling the region with blistery cold temperatures and blinding winds.

“It is the yardstick by which all Culpeper blizzards — before and since — are measured, a nightmare of snow, cold, wind and ice, a trial of hardship and deprivation,” he wrote.

Johnston also refers to Exponent editor Raleigh Green’s personal recollection of the historic storm.

Green, who took over as editor of the Exponent in 1897 and ran it for several years, concluded that the 1899 storm was far worse than the blizzard of 1857.

“Records from all parts of the state confirm the belief that the storm exceeded in violence that of 1857, looked back on as the greatest in the history of the state, in average depth as well as duration of snowfall, and, while the drifting in 1857 exceeded that of 1899, the effect upon travel from this year’s storm was greater,” Green wrote.

2009-10 winter snowfall totals

Date         inches
Dec. 5 4.5
Dec. 9 1.5
Dec. 19 19.5
Jan. 30 5
Feb. 6 19.5
Total 50

Source: National Weather Service