Credit: Shawnie Loveless

WSPN’s Molly Bergeron and Annabelle Hage investigate the past of Waylands snowfall and discuss various Wayland residents predictions for future snowfall.

Imagine waking up on a chilly winter morning and looking out the window to see your front yard covered with a foot or more of fresh snow. While this may seem like a realistic Massachusetts morning in winter, it’s looking more and more improbable as snowfall declines inches every year, with the last blizzard in Massachusetts being 2022.

December through February in the Northeast is commonly thought of as a winter wonderland, filled with below freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall. In 2021, Boston got a total of 43.3 inches of snow. However, in following years, this amount has decreased rapidly. According to CBS news, the 2022-23 season produced 12.4 inches of snow, while during the 2023-2024 season, that number dropped to 9.8 inches of snow, which is the third most minimal amount of snow ever recorded in Boston.

On the morning of Dec 5, WHS students saw the first snowfall of the 2024-2025 winter season. While only snowing a few inches, this was still unexpected by students.

“Seeing it snowing that morning was definitely very surprising,” junior Abby Peredna said. “I saw on the news that it might snow but because of what it’s been like the past few years, I thought nothing was going to happen.”

Given the lack of snow in previous winters, and then an early snowfall this school year, some people are left wondering how much snow is now possible in Wayland this winter.

“I hope that we have a snowy winter, but will settle for a cold winter,” WHS nordic ski coach Chris Li said. “As long as it’s cold, places can make snow for us to ski on [and] with weather that is constantly changing from 50ºF to 20ºF and rain, it’s not conducive to good ski conditions.”

With the infrequent snowfall patterns over the years, several people have different predictions for this upcoming winter season. New England meteorologist Todd Gutner predicted that Wayland will be getting less than 50-60 inches of snowfall this winter, which is below average for the Metro-west area.

“Some [factors are] due to the climate changing, some of it is due to the atmospheric variables and how they line up,” Gutner said.

Changing sea temperatures in the Pacific Ocean also have an effect on snowfall patterns. These changing temperatures are part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, with the El Niño and La Niña phases, which can affect temperatures globally. Currently, we are experiencing the El Niño phase, meaning the Pacific Ocean is warmer than normal which leads to warmer and drier winters. However, meteorologists are expecting to transition into the La Niña phase throughout 2025, which brings cooler and wetter conditions.

“[La Niña] is not a very favorable scenario for snow lovers in New England, especially near the coastline,” Gutner said. “La Niñas typically give us a bunch of little storms we call clippers.”

Massachusetts, being in the Northeast, is no stranger to cold temperatures and snowfall during the winter months. However, with the rising temperatures due to climate change, along with the transition into the La Niña phase, Wayland and surrounding areas might be experiencing more rain than snow.

“I think that the rising temperature will definitely impact how much snow we get, because lots of the precipitation in December so far has been rain,” sophomore Somerby Newton said. “I also think that since Wayland had a very dry fall, we might not have a lot of precipitation anyway this winter.”

In spite of the relatively light snowfall so far, meteorologists predict that things could start to pick up this winter as we transition deeper into the La Niña phase.

“I would think that we are going to catch up at some point here. Maybe the second week, the second half of January, or maybe February, when it finally settles in a little bit,” Gutner said. “We’ll start getting things to line up a little better, with cold and with some small to moderate storms as we get into La Niña a little bit better.”

While climate change and global warming have caused lots of weather changes all over the world, Blue Hill Observatory meteorologist Joshua Polen says that he can’t exactly blame Wayland’s recent lack of snow on climate change.

“If you look at the historical trend at Blue Hill, it is fairly normal for snowfall totals to fluctuate,” Polen said. “So can we say that this recent lull has been because of climate change? Not exactly.”

However, Polen does mention that it is a growing consensus that climate change does and will continue to play a role in winter weather.

“I think we can more definitively say that the warming temperature trend is a result of climate change but in terms of snowfall, it’s hard to say,” Polen said. “I do think the future winters will be warmer overall, just because that’s fairly obvious at this point.”

In spite of the odds seeming like Wayland might not be receiving a ton of snow this winter, Gutner explains that there is always a chance of a big snowstorm happening, since weather can be so unpredictable at times.

“So while the cards are kind of stacked against us to have large amounts of snow this winter, it’s still possible,” Gutner said.