Winter Storm Warning Results: Heavy Snow Tops 30 Feet

It's May, and some areas of the country are still getting hit with winter storm warnings and heavy snow advisories, but thankfully, most of the country can give their snow plow a break. Until next season, of course.

This winter was a particularly harsh one across the U.S., and some areas of the country got hit harder than others. The biggest snow totals set in the lake-effect belts of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and western New York, which is typical, but what's not normal is the amount of snow these areas received. This winter pushed those regions past the point of "normal rough season" and into something heavier.

Some towns finished more than 100 inches above their historical averages, which is the kind of number that stops sounding real after a while. Snowbanks turned into walls, and parking lots disappeared a little at a time. By late winter, people weren't really asking when it would snow again. They were just asking how much. Lake-effect country is used to harsh winters, but this season was a bit much.

Heavy Snow Hit the Midwest, Northeast the Hardest, With Areas Getting 100 Inches More Than Normal

According to the weather experts at AccuWeather, in Michigan, two stations where snow is officially measured topped 300 inches, which rarely happens. As of mid-March, "the town of Herman had measured 350.5 inches (29.2 feet) of snow, roughly 120 inches above normal. Nearby Laurium has recorded 331.3 inches (27.6 feet)," meteorologist Jesse Ferrell reported.

Steve Jurmu, a trained weather observer with the NOAA Cooperative Observers, also goes by "Yooper Steve." He's a tour guide in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and tells AccuWeather that it was a winter unlike anything he has seen.

Other parts of the East didn't touch Michigan's raw snowfall totals, but relative to normal, some places got absolutely buried by their own standards. Along the I-95 corridor, from Wilmington up through New York City and Boston, snowfall percentages climbed well above average, even if the final numbers looked modest next to lake-effect country. Islip, New York, out on Long Island, ended the season with 68.2 inches of snow. Normally, it sees about 29.4. That's not a small overachievement. That's winter giving these areas too much attention.

Up in Vermont, Jay Peak unofficially picked up 347 inches of snow, which somehow still counts as a step down after last season's staggering 475 inches. Then there were the Carolinas, where snow usually feels more like an event than a season. A rare late-January winter storm changed that fast, pushing some areas to three or four times their normal snowfall totals.

So, it was a wild season for snow across the U.S. The country didn't just get a winter. It got a stretch that kept bending expectations, even in places that thought they knew their limits. Lake-effect country took the hardest hits, but the surprise was how far the extra snow spread.

This story was originally published by Men's Journal on May 11, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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This story was originally published May 11, 2026 at 4:01 AM.