Quite the day across the region. I certainly don't think we'll be talking about drought conditions anytime soon. With more snow for many areas today, and rain for others, the ground is amply saturated with more liquid content in the snow.
Take a gander (top left image) at some of our new snowfall totals from the most recent storm system on Wednesday, February 27. Snow totals were widely ranged...anywhere from 0" in the lower valley locales, to 12"+ in the mountainous areas.
Click here for NH snow reports
Click here for VT and NY snow reports
Click here for snow reports from Bennington and Windham counties in VT
As you well know after Wednesday, some snow is wetter, and heavier in nature than other snowfalls. Wednesday's snow featured high water content (more liquid content in each snowflake), making the snow a wet, heavy consistency, best for snowmen and snowballs. Heidi and Kristen from Mendon certainly used the snow to their advantage to build a snowman friend (check out that image to the left). High water content snow often comes with a warmer near surface and through-cloud temperature, while lower water content (the fluffier snow variety) comes at colder temps from surface to in-cloud.
You can analyze the snow depth and amount of liquid content in the snow. The liquid content held in the snow can essentially be thought of as how much water would come out of the snow if you melted it down. NOAA provides data for this. See that image (left bottom) to view the most recent snow depth and water equivalent across our region. The water content within our snowfall ranges from about 1-2" of water equivalent up through about 1200' elevation. In the higher elevations where this is generally more snow on the ground, the liquid content goes up to 5-10" of water equivalent.
This means, if we were to warm up to 60 degrees tomorrow and melt away all of our snow, all of that liquid would drip down into the rivers and lakes (that would be bad...we'd have some serious flooding problems).
Given no big warm ups in the forecast, I'd say we're okay on the flooding front right now, but will need to keep tabs on the snowpack and snowmelt going into the warmer spring months.
