BALTIMORE — Snowfall in Maryland is a very feast or famine kind of deal as our winters can have that blockbuster style storm or we can end up barely seeing an inch throughout the entire winter.
Given this type of setup, how often do these big snowstorms occur?
The frequency of a storm that produces 12 or more inches of snow in a three day period is around once every seven years.
Our last major storm was back in January 2016, when on the 22nd and 23rd we saw a grand total of 29.2 inches of snow. This was the last big snowstorm we have seen in Maryland and nearly all of the snow that was seen that year as the total for the season was 32.5 inches.
There have been 20 big snowstorms that have produced over 12 or more inches of snow since 1892 when records were being kept.
While these storms are usually a once per year type of event, there are outlier years where multiple big systems can occur such as the famous winter of 2009-2010 where we were hit by 3 nor'easters that dropped over 12 inches of snow each time for a grand season total of 77 inches of snow.
