Southeast gets rare snowfall event

Augustans and the rest of the Southeast woke up to a winter wonderland on Jan. 22 in what was a relatively rare precipitation event.

The last time Augusta received accumulated snow was in 2022 and the minor dusting earlier this month was just the dress rehearsal to Tuesday’s storm that saw a reported accumulation of one to two inches in Richmond, Columbia and Aiken counties; meanwhile, Waynesboro recorded three inches of snowfall, according to the National Weather Service.

Steve Lavoie, forecaster with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says that a total of 12 Southeastern states received recorded snowfall.

“We had snowfall occurring from Texas to New Jersey, which is quite rare. All of the right factors had to come together to make this happen,” Lavoie said.

According to Lavoie, the sustained cold throughout the region, starting in December of last year, was the main reason for the extended coverage of what was really a normal precipitation event.

While, for many, the flurry infused air looked like something normally seen off the coast of Lake Superior instead of the newly renamed Gulf of America, but Lavoie says that only one state’s snowfall was considered to have reached blizzard conditions.

“The criteria for blizzard conditions has to do with wind criteria, not the total amount of snowfall on the ground. It was actually Louisiana that reached the criteria to be considered a blizzard,” Lavoie said.

Lavoie says that the Augusta metro area has never recorded actually blizzard conditions, “knock on wood.”