Just How Much Snow Would All This Rain Have Created?

While it may be just over 10 days until Christmas, so far this year, southeast Minnesota's weather hasn't seemed much like winter, with most of our precipitation falling as rain. But just how much snow would all this rain have given us?

If you're hoping for a white Christmas, like I do every year, all this rain and fog hasn't been very helpful. And while the latest forecast from the National Weather Service for the Rochester area (as of 12 pm on Monday 12/14) now says we can expect the precipitation to continue falling as snow and give us around an inch of slushy accumulation by Monday night, I was wondering just how much snow we'd have received if the temperature was just a little colder, and all that rain had fallen as snow instead.

Not surprisingly, meteorologists have a way of figuring that sort of thing out. This site, theweatherprediction.com, explains it like this: "The "average" snow to liquid ratio is 10:1. This is saying that if 10 inches of snow fell and that snow was melted it would produce 1 inch of liquid precipitation in the rain gauge."  Which, conversely, would mean that an inch of rain would typically give us about 10 inches of snow. (There are other factors involved, of course, but this is at least a place from which to start our estimate.)

Now, according to the National Weather Service records from Rochester International Airport, southeast Minnesota has received just over .75 inches of rain since late Sunday night. So, according to that very basic formula, if the temperature had only dropped below the freezing mark, we'd already be looking at having to shovel around 7 inches of snow. Now THAT would make for a white Christmas!