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Mariton: February Precipitaiton

March 1, 2014

by Tim Burris, Preserve Manager

Mariton missed out on the ice storm that hit most of NLT’s preserves.  We only had a little bit of ice and most of it melted off of branches the next day in the bright sunshine.  We did receive a bit of snow during the month though.  (Didn’t everyone in the Northeast?)  At the end of the month we had received 5.63 inches of precipitation.  (That is a measurement of melted snow, sleet, etc.)  We received about ¾” of rain during the month, although it is hard to remember anything other than snow.

My average for the month is 3.13 inches at Mariton.   So, February 2014 was relatively wet.  Checking the records I was amazed to see that in February 2008 we received 7.20 inches of precipitation!  Fortunately most of it was rain that year.   At most, I think we only received a few inches of snow during the month that year.  On February 13, 2008 I recorded 3.18 inches of snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain throughout the 24 hour period.  I think most of that came as rain.  I do my recordings at 8:30 a.m. and I wrote “Rain” in my work log that morning.  It rained during the day and I recorded another 0.50 inches of precipitation the next morning.  Without doing a lot of research, I am guessing we had a warm nor’easter.  If it had been cold enough to be mostly snow, we could have had three feet!

So, as we head into March, (with another snow storm forecasted) Mariton is about 3 inches above average for the year.    We ended 2013 slightly below average, but have recovered that now.  It will be interesting to see how March progresses.  Since the temperatures are forecasted to remain below average for the next week, we will probably keep our snow cover for a few weeks.  That means I get a little farther behind on work.