CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The 2022-23 winter was a mild one in West Virginia and now the National Weather Service said for at least one of its reporting spots it was the mildest in history.
Snowfall totals for Beckley were a record low for the year at 11.5 inches of snow in the city. That’s the least amount of snow in Beckley’s history dating back to the late 1800’s when records started being kept. The second lowest snow on record was 13.6 inches from the winter of 1949-50 and third was the winter of 1948-49 when only 14.1 inches of snow accumulated in Beckley.
Three other West Virginia cities saw the snow total for the year in the lowest three ever. Charleston officially recorded three inches of snow which was second only to the winter of 1931-32. That year the Capital City received 1.2 inches of snow. Elkins also had the second least snowfall on record with an official total in 2022-23 of 15.2 inches. The mild winter of 1931 and ’32 also still ranks as the least snowfall in the history of Elkins when they got only 14.7 inches.
Huntington’s snowfall total for 2022-23 was 2.6 inches and it was the third lowest total in the city’s history. The lowest was 1948-49 when Huntington received only 1.5 inches and during the winter of 1907-08, Huntington received only 2.1 inches.
“I think it was mainly a lack of temperatures. We just didn’t have any real good cold air outbreaks and it seemed like most of our precipitation fell as rain,” said Meteorologist Simone Lewis in the Charleston Weather Bureau.
Forecasters struggled to offer any explanation as to why the winter was so mild and with so little snow. The impact of a mild winter can be felt some in West Virginia, but the impact isn’t nearly as pronounced as places like the western United States.
“Certainly when you don’t have a good snowpack up across your mountains, that leads to less flow in the rivers and also overall drier conditions. Then again, you can have a wet spring and it doesn’t necessarily matter that you didn’t receive too much snow over the winter,” she explained.