Here's When Your Final Accumulating Snow Typically Happens

Spring officially arrives March 20, but that doesn't mean the chance for snow comes to an end in parts of the West, Plains, Midwest and Northeast.

The average final accumulating snow happens in March or April for many: We scoured National Weather Service records to compile the average date of the final measurable snow (at least 0.1 inches).

The map below shows that for many locations it's usually in March or April. In parts of the Mountain West, it's not until May or even June or July.

Since this map is just an average, it means the latest measurable snow on record has occurred even later in spring than what is shown. We have a closer look at those dates for select cities in the regional sections that follow below.

Northeast: Areas closer to the coast usually see the last snowfall of the season during March. For areas farther north and inland, the last snowfall typically takes place in April. Snow has fallen deep into late April or even May in many parts of the region.

Midwest: Areas across the Northern Plains into the upper Midwest and northern Great Lakes typically experience the season's final snowfall in April, while areas farther south usually say goodbye to additional snow in March.

The latest snowfall on record for most of the region is in May, even for areas as far south as Amarillo, Texas, where the latest snow on record fell May 4, 1935.

The latest snowfall for many locations in the western U.S. is in June, but a few have experienced the last snow of the season as late as July, including Crater Lake National Park, Oregon, and Yellowstone Lake, Montana.

Alaska is not shown on the map at the top. Dates for the average last snowfall there range from March 31 in Juneau to June 24 in Utqiaġvik (formerly known as Barrow).

It's been a snow season dichotomy so far: The general storyline this winter has been a dearth of accumulations in much of the East, as the map below illustrates in the brown shadings. So perhaps snow-lovers in this region are still itching to see flakes flying as we march toward the change of seasons.

It's been quite the opposite from the Mountain West into most of the Northern Plains and upper Midwest, where snowfall has been much above average, as shown by the green and blue shadings.

A​ few notes about the data in this article: We only used cities and locations where the average last measurable snow of the season occurs in March or later. As a result, Washington, D.C., was among the cities not shown; Its average date of the season's final snow is Feb. 27.

Since accumulating graupel or hail is also officially classified as snow in daily and monthly climate reports, we made every effort to quality check each "latest snow" record, removing those dates when temperatures were clearly too warm for snow, and hail likely fell instead.

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