From a weather standpoint, this winter wasn't as bad as it seemed—honest!

Decorah weather statistician Richard Bernatz has just finished crunching the numbers for the meteorological winter of November 1st through March 31st—and the statistics weren't as bad as it seemed.
 
Bernatz says this just-completed winter ranks 37th out of 126 winters for which records have been kept.  He calculated winter severity using 15 weighted measures, including snowfall amounts and high and low temperatures.  While the just-completed winter had 73 days on which the high temperature was less than 32 degrees, the total snowfall of 48.2 inches ranked 37th out of 126 years.  An unusually warm December in which temperatures were 6.7 degrees above average counteracted the four other months of below average temperatures.