March 20, 2018
Thom Carroll/PhillyVoice
Snow covers trees and the road on North 21st Street in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia on March 7, 2018.
If Philadelphia gets the 16 inches of snow on Wednesday called for in the latest forecast, this past winter would land in the Top 10 snowiest seasons of the past nearly 40 years.
When flurries began to fall in Center City Philadelphia prior to noon Tuesday, the official accumulation of snow this winter at the Philadelphia International Airport was 22.2 inches, according to the National Weather Service.
Add another 16 inches of snow or so before the nor'easter moves out on Wednesday night, and the city would stand near 38.2 inches of total accumulation, good for sixth-place – unofficially – on the list of the snowiest winters in Philadelphia from 1979-2018.
Assuming this past winter moves onto the list, that would mean 6 of the Top 10 snowiest winters since 1979 have come in the past decade.
The table below combines historical data from the weather service and a bit of speculation/guessing about snowfall totals from the current storm:
| TOP 10 SNOWIEST WINTERS IN PHILLY (1979-2018) | (inches) |
| 2009-2010 | 78.7 |
| 2013-2014 | 68.0 |
| 1995-1996 | 65.5 |
| 2002-2003 | 46.3 |
| 2010-2011 | 44.0 |
| 2017-2018 | 38.2* |
| 1982-1983 | 35.9 |
| 2004-2005 | 30.4 |
| 2015-2016 | 27.5 |
| 2014-2015 | 27.0 |
| Seasonal average | 22.4 |
| *including hypothetical 16 inches from Tuesday/Wednesday storm |
