How snowfall levels have changed across Ohio [Video]

It’s easy to wonder anecdotally if winters are warmer, milder, or otherwise being affected by climate change, but where in the United States has annual snowfall changed the most? To find answers, look at the data. In a 2020 report titled “The Case of the Shifting Snow,” researchers from the nonprofit climate communication organization Climate Central identified how snowfall patterns have changed in 143 American cities that receive annual snowfall of at least 5 inches.

Using data from the Applied Climate Information System, these researchers compared cities’ annual and seasonal snowfall across two decades: 1970 to 1979 and 2010 to 2019. These range from absolutely snow-buried cities like Buffalo and Utica in New York to places in the South and Northwest with almost no snow. Some of these cities have economies that rely pretty explicitly on the annual snowfall in their areas: In ski resort regions, business owners are scrambling to make up the difference in …