If Weekend Rain Had Been Snow, How Much Would Bangor Have Gotten?
The rain was about as bad as it gets.
This weekend, between Saturday and Sunday, there were spots in Maine that received almost half a foot of rain. That's absolutely insane. And this morning, reports started coming in from all over the Bangor area and beyond, that there were still flooded spots and washed-out roads, making this morning's commute kinda tricky.
Here in the Bangor area, according to WABI, we got just over 3.5 inches of rain. But imagine living in Bath, where they got a full two inches more than we did. They certainly lived up the name Bath over the weekend. But this all got me wondering, how much snow would we have gotten if this were January instead of September?
The ratio varies a bit when calculating the math.
Turns out, no matter how you slice it, we'd have been 100%, absolutely buried under snow. From what I was reading on NOAA's website, the average ratio is 13 inches of snow for every inch of rain. But, that number could go higher or lower, depending on weather conditions.
For instance, if it were dry powdery snow, you could gain up to 50 inches (yes, 5-0!) of snow to equal an inch of rain. Or, 2 inches of sleet for every inch of rain. Either way, who wants tons of dry snow, or half a ton of sleet? There isn't really a winning answer to that question. So let's run some numbers...
So, just how much would we have gotten?
In Bangor, we got 3.62 inches of rain, which would basically amount to just over 47 inches of snow. Basically, 4 feet of snow! Or 7.25 inches of sleet. Worse, if it was absolute bedlam and we got the dry powdery equivalent, we'd have gotten over 15 feet of snow. In one 24 hour storm. that would translate to about 7.5 inches an hour. What?!
No matter how you slice it, if this had been a winter storm, of any kind, it would have led to catastrophic circumstances for us greater Bangorians. I'm not sure what happens in nature that generally seems to prevent this, but I ain't gonna argue. I'm just gonna count my blessings that it was just another rainy weekend.