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Who Would Have Thought? Bowling Green Has Seen Nearly 15 More Inches of Snowfall Than Anchorage, AK

Kevin Willis, WKU Public Radio

The amount of snow that’s fallen in southern Kentucky over the past year is enough to make the upper Midwest proud.

Bowling Green has seen 43.5 inches of snow between February 14, 2015, and the same date this year.

Western Kentucky University meteorology professor Greg Goodrich says that’s more than five times the normal amount of snow in Warren County over any 12 month period.

“Normally, in that period, we would expect about eight inches. And in some winters we struggle to get even that. So for us to get this many big snow storms is really amazing, and there’s only a few other times when we’ve experienced anything like this.”

The total snowfall seen in the past 12 months in Bowling Green is all the more impressive when compared to cities normally associated with cold weather.

The nearly four feet of snow seen in Warren County is more than what fell during the same time period in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Salt Lake City.

Here’s a look at the total amount of snowfall in select cities between Feb. 14, 2015 through Feb. 14, 2016, courtesy of Professor Goodrich:

Bowling Green, KY:                 43.5”

International Falls, MN:        42.8”

Chicago, IL                                 39.3”

Minneapolis, MN                     39.1”

Burlington, VT                          38.9”

Salt Lake City, UT                    38.7”

Billings, MT                               37.7”

Cleveland, OH                          35.8”

Anchorage, AK                         30.6”

Goodrich says the weather phenomenon known as El Nino is behind the huge snow amounts in southern Kentucky.

“It pushes the normal wintertime storm track far to the south, and what we’ve seen over the past 12 months is a storm track where the storms originate in the central plains, and they move down through northern Mississippi and Alabama. And that just puts Kentucky, and specifically Bowling Green, right in the sweet spot for significant snow.”

Kevin is the News Director at WKU Public Radio. He has been with the station since 1999, and was previously the Assistant News Director, and also served as local host of Morning Edition.
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