Sources and method
Every number on howmanyinches comes from the open data below or from the exact definition of the inch. Naming a source does not mean that agency endorses this site, and our pages are not official products of any agency.
| Data | Source | Used for | License |
|---|---|---|---|
| Snowfall, last 24, 48 and 72 hours and season to date | NOAA National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center (NOHRSC), National Snowfall Analysis version 2, GeoTIFF grids at 0.04 degree | Snow today, state and city pages | U.S. federal data; NWS pages are in the public domain unless noted otherwise. Credited, no endorsement implied |
| Normal yearly and seasonal snowfall, days with 1 in and 5 in or more | NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020 (annual/seasonal, by station) | State and city pages | U.S. federal data, public domain (17 U.S.C. 105) |
| Towns and their center points | U.S. Census Bureau, 2024 Gazetteer Files (places) | Snow pages | Public domain (17 U.S.C. 105) |
| Town population (which towns are listed) | U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2024 population estimates for incorporated places | Snow pages | Public domain (17 U.S.C. 105) |
| Length definitions | International yard and pound agreement of 1959 (1 in = 25.4 mm), as used by NIST | All conversion and height pages | Facts, not copyrightable |
| Fonts | Barlow Condensed, Barlow, Chivo Mono, served from our own server | All pages | SIL Open Font License 1.1 |
| Site code | Astro (static site generator); geotiff.js on our server to read the NOAA grids | Building pages, the data job | MIT |
How the snow numbers are made
- NOHRSC publishes the analysis for 00 and 12 UTC each day. Every 30 minutes our server checks for a new one, downloads the 24, 48 and 72 hour grids and the season grid (which starts on September 30), and checks their size and content before replacing the previous data.
- For each town we read the grid cell that contains the town's Census center point. We list incorporated places of 5,000 people or more in the lower 48 states and Washington, DC. Alaska and Hawaii are outside the grid.
- Each page is built with the latest values and then refreshes them in your browser from our server, so the numbers can be newer than the page itself.
- The "normal year" is the 1991-2020 normal of the nearest NOAA station with snowfall records within 30 km of the town, preferring airport stations. The station and its distance are named on the page.
Notes
- Snow figures are estimates for general information. They are not official storm reports and not for travel or safety decisions.
- Works of the U.S. federal government are not protected by copyright (17 U.S.C. 105). We do not use agency names or logos as our own, and we do not present our numbers as unaltered NOAA data: we sample and round them.