Another storm, another snow miss for Philly. Can this keep happening until spring?
Norfolk, Va., just got 10.2 inches of snow. That's 2.2 more than Philly has had for the entire season.

The peculiar is normal in Philadelphia winters, but this one is entering the realm of the surreal.
Philly is the only Eastern city north of Norfolk, Va., that has yet to reach double-figures in seasonal snow totals.
Norfolk just got creamed with a record 10.2 inches of snow. Philly has an outside shot at seeing 10.2 flakes Thursday.
Philly has a 40% chance of seeing snow showers Thursday afternoon and evening, but, “If we get anything, it’s really not going to be much at all,” said Amanda Lee, meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Mount Holly.
That prognosis is down somewhat from the 10 to 18 inches that computer models last week were foreseeing for Philadelphia. Again, we learn that the models’ crystal balls have a certain opacity beyond five days, and that the glass becomes decidedly frosted after day seven.
As of Wednesday, with a grand total of 8.0 inches measured at Philadelphia International Airport, the city remained tied with New Orleans in the winter of 2024-25 snow derby.
More snow has fallen north, south, east, and west of the city than at PHL. That includes Trenton, Wilmington, Baltimore, and Atlantic City. Salisbury — on Maryland’s Eastern Shore — has had twice as much snow as Philly.
Why is snow avoiding Philadelphia?
The cold air has been plentiful the last two months, and February precipitation has been above normal.
But the storms have come in more or less two varieties — so-called sliders, such as this one, which slide off the coast to the south and leave Philly cold and dry; and “cutters,” which pass to the west of the region, leaving Philly and areas to the east warm and wet.
Lacking has been a classic coastal nor’easter to paste the entire Northeast Corridor from D.C. to Beantown. That helps explain why, even outside Philly, snow has been about 70% of normal in cities along the I-95 corridor from Wilmington to Boston. Totals are well above normal in Baltimore and Washington.
Preventing storms from making that turn up the coast have been “strong winds aloft from the Southwest to Iceland,” said Louis Uccellini, former head of the National Weather Service and an international expert on winter storms. “Any storm that gets caught up in this is just going to keep right on going.” Look out, Iceland.
The ongoing weak La Niña event — in which sea-surface temperatures have remained 1 to 1.5 degrees below normal over a vast area of the tropical Pacific — has been affecting west-to-east upper-air winds that carry weather to the United States.
La Niña typically has a dampening effect on snow-producing nor’easters, Jon Gottschalck, the operational prediction branch chief at the Climate Prediction Center, had noted in announcing the government winter outlook in the fall.
But La Niña doesn’t act in isolation, and this winter has been full of surprises. For example, typically during La Niña, the South is warmer and drier than normal. In the preseason outlooks, no one was talking about a potential Gulf Coast blizzard.
And while even though the lack of nor’easters is explainable, what speaks to what Mount Holly weather service meteorologist Ray Martin calls the “snow hole” of Philadelphia, where the seasonal total is less than half of normal.
La Niña? Madden-Julian oscillation? Polar vortex? Super Bowl effect?
Said Tom Kines, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc.: “I don’t think scientifically there’s any explanation for it. Sometimes you just throw your arms up.”
Is any significant snow in Philadelphia’s future?
Nothing is imminent, said the weather service’s Lee: “The forecast is pretty much dry after Thursday.” Not that Thursday should be especially wet or white.
After two more days of high temperatures staying below freezing, the forecast calls for a moderating trend starting Friday, with temperatures reaching well into the 40s next week. Models are hinting at another cold shot later in the month, but they have not been making a real strong case for their credibility lately.
Said Kines, who is no fan of snow, “We should just enjoy it while it lasts.”
But he advised snow lovers against despair. “At some point, it’s going to even out,” he said. “It always does.”