How often does a really bad snowstorm strike around Christmas in your neighborhood?

Question

Two bad snowstorms that I remember hit on these days:
Christmas Eve 2002 in Cleveland, Ohio 8-12 inches
December 22, 2004 in Cincinnati, Ohio a foot and -3 degrees
The worst part of the second date was the cold. Based on my experience, I would say that this happens every 3-5 years in Cleveland and maybe every 6-9 years in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Answer 1

I personally would say it happens even less often than that in Cincinnati (although you're right about the 2004 storm, I think it was actually even a bit more snow than that, the roads were horried). Generally I think of December and very early January in Cincinnati as being fairly low snow periods- Mid Jan and Feb are the big times. For Cincinnati, I'd put it at something more like every 12-15 years as my guess- I just remember too many low or no snow Christmases down here over the last 33 years.

Answer 2

Welcome to the land of "meatball" statistics. To do this correctly, you need to define "around Christmas" and a "really bad snowstorm". Otherwise, you can't define a valid observation. The second problem is how do you come up with your estimates? With one observation, it is tenuous. You could search newspaper records and get more data.

In our area, bad snowstorms before January are unusual (below freezing and in excess of 6 inches in one day and within 3 days of Christmas).

Answer 3

Not very often in Oshawa Ontartio. In fact we only have a 50/50% chance of a white Christmas. I do not remember a storm that stopped traffic or lasted for long but maybe my memory isn't so good