Big Stories from the 2023-2024 Historic Winter Season (Invited Presentation)

This review will highlight some of the "big stories" of the 2023-24 winter season and emerging stories from the start of the 2024-25 winter. These events will be used to illustrate the impacts of winter conditions on society, and the weather enterprise’s growing success in building public readiness for such events.

The 2023–24 winter season ranked warmest on record for the contiguous U.S. with eight states across the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes and Northeast each observing their warmest winter on record. The Northeast experienced an historic snow drought, with Northeast cities setting their longest streaks of <1 inch of snow. Coastal storms predominantly featured rain, with east coast storms bringing flooding and high tides in December. A series of atmospheric river events brought heavy rain and snow to parts of the West during February, causing significant flooding, powerful winds, landslides and power outages in parts of California. The city of Los Angeles received more than 12 inches of rain during February, becoming the wettest February in decades for the city. Historically-early season severe weather assailed the Central U.S. in February as well.

Although a historically warm season, the intermountain west saw repeated winter snowfall, and episodic snow storms notched monthly record snowfalls in Wichita, KS (November), Dubuque, IA (January), Jackson, WY (January), and an all-time daily snowfall record in North Platte, Nebraska (15.3” on March 7, 2024). Ice storms in North Dakota, Oregon, the mid-South, and New England were particularly damaging. Finally, winter would not give up in Montana, as a rare late May snowstorm knocked out power to much of western Montana.

The societal impacts of winter storms were readily evident, with three Billion dollar disasters during the season. In December, a warm and powerful east coast storm from Florida to Maine produced widespread impacts from heavy rainfall, flooding, high winds and coastal erosion. The heavy rainfall and snowmelt were amplified by record-high temperatures in the Northeast. In January, there were over 60 fatalities and nearly $4B in damages from two separate severe winter storms (ice storm in Oregon and cold and snow in the mid-Mississippi Valley).

In reviewing the events of the 2023-24 season, successes and challenges in building public readiness for winter weather will be highlighted, including the use of new product and messaging innovations.