CLEVELAND — The lake-effect snow event from Nov. 28-Dec. 3 dumped a tremendous amount of snow for the primary snowbelt.
The highest total recorded was 63.2 inches near Saybrook Township in Ashtabula County. Most of the northern half of the county came in with over 2 feet of snow.
While there are no official reporting stations for the snowbelt, there are plenty of unofficial snow spotters around the area. The Saybrook observation came from a trained spotter, and another reported 40 inches for the city of Ashtabula.
How does all of this compare to average or recent years? Ashtabula is the largest city in the county, so we will use that for a point of reference.
A 10-year average snowfall map from the National Weather Service puts the seasonal average for Ashtabula right around 80 inches for the period of 1996-2005. Using this measurement, Ashtabula got half of their average snow for the whole season with this one event, and it's still early December, so there's still a lot of time to add snow. Several more inches could be possible before the end of the week.
Last winter was a noticeable shift for Northeast Ohio. It was incredibly warm, which cut off a lot of snow potential. For the 2023-24 snow season, Ashtabula only received about 30 inches of snow — less than half of the normal average and also less than they've already had for the current snow season.
Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, which is where the official measurements for the area are taken, also came in with less than half of its average snow for the last season. Hopkins has only had 3.1 inches of snow so far, while the average for the whole season is about 63.8 inches, which is basically all of the snow that Saybrook got with this one lake effect event.
