Ask The Answer Person: "Are we getting an early winter?"

The Answer Person says: "Yes, no one likes to shovel snow early in November--and we've already had to do that twice.  If it's true that 'misery loves company,' then you'll love to hear that 11 out of the past 125 years for which snowfall records have been kept in Decorah were years in which at least 10 inches of snow fell.

And pity those folks who were here in 1985--that's when nearly 20 inches of snow fell--in November!

As for the first two weeks of November being an adequate predictor of how bad a winter this will be, well, not so much.  Luther College professor and Decorah meteorologist Richard Bernatz each spring crunches the numbers from winter weather and produces an overall severity score.  But the score has 15 different metrics involving temperature and precipitation, so even if snowfall is heavy, the winter might not be ranked as severe as other winters if temperatures are milder.

For instance, the metric uses not only the total inches of snowfall, but the number of days with significant snowfall of at least one inch.  It also uses the number of days with a high temperature less than 32 degrees, but also less than zero or 9 below.  As Bernatz says, "These statistics give some measure of the length, frequency and severity of 'winter' events."

In other words, we've got a lot of weather left to live through before we can state what kind of a winter we've had."