The 'Blizzard of '96' already surpasses many snowfall totals from 1993's 'Storm of the Century'

Ten major locations throughout the middle Atlantic region and the Northeastern United States have set snowfall records this week, shattering record snowfall amounts set during the last "Storm of the Century" in March 1993, according to climatologists at the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University.

Those locations are Philadelphia; Newark, N.J.; Dulles Airport, Va.; Baltimore; Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Pa.; New York City; Elkins, W.Va.; Charleston, W.Va.; National Airport, Va.; and Bridgeport, Conn.

Philadelphia handily beat the previous storm record of 12 inches by getting 30 inches of snow as of 10 a.m. today (Jan. 8). In fact, Philadelphia also beat the "storm of the century" record set on Feb. 11-12, 1983, which was 21.3 inches.

The 35-year-old, one-storm snowfall record for Newark, N.J., set on Feb. 3-4, 1961, also was topped during this blizzard, as the storm pounded it with 28 inches. The storm was still in progress, as this report was written. The previous one- storm record was 22.6 inches. Newark's storm of the century total was 12.7 inches, well below this storm.

"The forecasts were pretty accurate," said Keith Eggleston, climatologist at the Cornell-based center. "From another point-of-view, these are unprecendented amounts, just because this kind of snowfall never happened in some of these cities."

Dulles International Airport, in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., recorded 2 feet of snow, shattering the "Storm of the Century" totals by almost 10 inches and beating the one-storm record by 1.2 inches, set on Feb. 10-11, 1983.

At Charleston, W.Va., this storm barely broke previous records. The March 1993 storm was also the previous one- storm record. By a slim one-tenth of an inch, the Blizzard of '96 set a new record, one-storm total of 19 inches.