Decorah weather observer Richard Bernatz says this winter has not been severe

Decorah weather observer Richard Bernatz has crunched the numbers on the first three months of the winter of 2015-2016 (November--January) and has learned that this has been an exceptionally mild winter.

Bernatz used 15 measures of severity, including the average high and low temperatures and the total inches of snowfall.  He says only two measures were more severe than average--the number of days with a high temperature less than 10 degrees (six instead of an average of five) and the number of days between the first and last day of measurable snow (67 days instead of 61.5).

After computing all of the differences from the average winter weather statistics, Bernatz concluded November through January was 1216th out of 123 winters in terms of severity.  In other words, 115 winters have been more severe than this winter for November through January.