This winter is the second snowiest on record for the Peoria-area. The National Weather Service says the area has received more than 47 inches so far. That’s about 5.5 inches less than the highest recorded snowfall three years ago. Kirk Huettl is a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Lincoln. He says this winter is irregular for the region:
“That’s something usually in Central Illinois we’re not accustomed to having with one snow event after another piling up and building the snow-pack,” Huettl says.
“That’s more typical up in Wisconsin, Iowa, minnesota up in the northern states. Down here usually we get a snow event, it melts off and we get another one. This winter has been kind of unusual in that we’ve been building onto the snow in layers.”
Huettl says winter has yielded nearly double the recorded snowfall in an average Peoria winter. He also says temperatures this month are about 16 degrees colder than the winter average for the region. Flooding is also a concern later this week as temperatures warm up. Huettl says the extreme hot and cold weather the Peoria-area has experienced in recent years is reflected in new theories about climate change. Huettl says the Peoria-area snow will make 1.5 inches of rain as it melts.