Why Some Cities Show No Snow or Rain Figure

A missing reading is not the same as a dry one

NOAA's monthly snowfall and precipitation normals are each reported per station, and automated stations without a human observer, common at smaller regional airports, sometimes have no reading for one or both elements at all. Early in building this site, Buffalo, NY, a city known for lake-effect snow, showed 0 inches of snow for all 12 months, because the code was silently treating "no reading" the same as "zero," rather than checking which one NOAA actually meant.

Buffalo, NY: missing snow, real precipitation

Buffalo, NY's nearest station on record is Niagara Falls International, an airport station with no snow observer; it does report precipitation normally. So Buffalo's page shows a rainfall figure but says plainly that no snow figure is available here, rather than implying the city is snow-light.

Chicago, IL: missing both

Chicago, IL's assigned station, Chicago Northerly Island, is missing both the snowfall and precipitation normals NOAA usually publishes, so neither figure appears on Chicago's page. This isn't a guess at a "typical Chicago winter", it's a direct gap in the specific station this dataset uses for that city, stated as such.

How common this is

Across all 4,876 cities, 2,151 (44%) have no snowfall reading at their nearest station, and 277 (6%) have no precipitation reading; the two overlap only partly, a city can be missing one and not the other. Every affected page says so directly in its rain-and-snow section instead of picking a number that happens to look plausible.

Where to go next

See the range this plays out across: Morro Bay, CA, Delavan, WI, Silverthorne, CO.

What a 30-Year Climate Normal Actually Is · Why This Uses the Nearest NOAA Station, Not Your Address