NBC 5 Chief Meteorologist Rick Mitchell asks which of the following statements about weather in DFW is false.
Believe it or not, Dallas-Fort Worth has never had a snowless winter, at least not since records have been kept dating back to 1898.
Some of you are probably skeptical of this fact, with good reason. It seems like there have been many winters where no measurable snow fell. There have been, but the keyword is MEASURABLE snow. Measurable snow is defined as anything greater than a trace.
A trace of snow occurs anytime snow or sleet is observed, even if it is only a brief period. A trace will not produce a whitening of the ground. In some years, it's entirely possible that while the DFW weather observation site may have had a trace of snow, other locations did not have anything. So yes, it is possible that locations in and around the DFW area have been snowless. It's just never happened at the official DFW weather observation site.
Since 1898, DFW has had 33 winters that produced only a trace of snow. There have been 24 winters that produced measurable snow of less than one inch. Fourteen winters had anywhere from one inch to 1.9 inches of snow. Thirty winters had two to four inches, while 20 winters produced between four and ten inches of snow. Only five years have produced over 10 inches of snow, the highest total being 17.6 inches in the winter of 1977-78.
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So despite the many winters with no measurable snow, there still has been at least a trace of snow reported in DFW every winter since 1898. Could we break that streak this year? Don't count on it.
