How much does it really snow here?
Seasonal snowfall totals for the five counties we serve, from NOAA weather station records. This is the same history our seasonal contracts are priced from, published because winter budgets go wrong when they're based on gut feel instead of data.
Northern New Jersey averages 35.8" a season in Sussex, 35.5" a season in Warren, 30.4" a season in Bergen, 28.7" a season in Passaic and 18.8" a season in Morris, measured at the NOAA station named beside each county below. The averages are what a winter budget should be built on; the worst season on record is what decides whether a seasonal contract was worth having, and those run far higher, up to 95.9" in a single season.
Planning for the 2026-27 winter? Last winter, 2025-26, came in 22% to 91% above each county's long-run average across the counties we cover. What to budget for 2026-27 →
Sussex County
Station: Sussex 1 NW (NWS COOP, records to 1893) · 60 recorded seasons (1905–2023)
35.8" per season
Average across all 60 recorded seasons
95.9" worst winter
1995–96, the heaviest season on this station's record
0" lightest winter
1957–58. The swing between extremes is why per-storm budgets blow up
Recent seasons
The Sussex station stopped reporting in 2023. Recent seasons from Charlotteburg Reservoir (adjacent highlands): 2023–24: 6" · 2024–25: 27.3" · 2025–26: 54.7".
Biggest single-day snowfalls on record here: 28" (Feb 5, 1961) · 24" (Jan 8, 1996) · 24" (Dec 13, 1915) · 21.2" (Dec 30, 2000) · 20" (Mar 3, 1969).
Passaic County
Station: Charlotteburg Reservoir (NWS COOP) · 30 recorded seasons (1990–2026)
28.7" per season
Average across all 30 recorded seasons
70.9" worst winter
1995–96, the heaviest season on this station's record
1" lightest winter
2008–09. The swing between extremes is why per-storm budgets blow up
Recent seasons
Biggest single-day snowfalls on record here: 18" (Mar 14, 1993) · 16.5" (Jan 24, 2016) · 15" (Dec 31, 2000) · 14.5" (Jan 26, 2026) · 14.3" (Feb 2, 2021).
Bergen County
Station: Newark Liberty Intl (nearest long-record station) · 36 recorded seasons (1990–2026)
30.4" per season
Average across all 36 recorded seasons
78.4" worst winter
1995–96, the heaviest season on this station's record
2.7" lightest winter
2022–23. The swing between extremes is why per-storm budgets blow up
Recent seasons
Biggest single-day snowfalls on record here: 24" (Jan 23, 2016) · 18.8" (Feb 12, 2006) · 18.6" (Feb 17, 2003) · 18" (Jan 7, 1996) · 18" (Feb 11, 1994).
Morris County
Station: Boonton (NWS COOP) · 33 recorded seasons (1990–2026)
18.8" per season
Average across all 33 recorded seasons
88.5" worst winter
1995–96, the heaviest season on this station's record
0" lightest winter
2004–05. The swing between extremes is why per-storm budgets blow up
Recent seasons
Biggest single-day snowfalls on record here: 22" (Jan 8, 1996) · 16" (Dec 27, 2010) · 15" (Feb 12, 2006) · 11" (Feb 23, 2026) · 10" (Jan 26, 2026).
Warren County
Station: Hackettstown (CoCoRaHS observer) · 14 recorded seasons (2012–2026)
35.5" per season
Average across all 14 recorded seasons
60.2" worst winter
2017–18, the heaviest season on this station's record
12.1" lightest winter
2019–20. The swing between extremes is why per-storm budgets blow up
Recent seasons
Biggest single-day snowfalls on record here: 19.5" (Feb 2, 2021) · 16" (Jan 24, 2016) · 12" (Feb 14, 2014) · 11.5" (Feb 26, 2010) · 11" (Feb 11, 2010).
How many storms, not how many inches
A seasonal price is built from visits, not from a total. Below is how many days an average winter brings to each trigger depth, counted at the same stations. Read the row for your county at the trigger you are considering: that is roughly how many times a plow shows up in a normal year.
| County | 1" or more | 2" or more | 3" or more | 4" or more | 6" or more | Winters counted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sussex | 10.3 (3–21) | 7.1 (1–16) | 4.9 (1–13) | 3.4 (0–9) | 1.7 (0–7) | 67 (1897–2023) |
| Passaic | 10.5 (1–20) | 6.7 (1–15) | 4.6 (0–11) | 3.2 (0–9) | 1.6 (0–6) | 104 (1894–2026) |
| Morris | 8.4 (1–24) | 5.3 (0–17) | 3.4 (0–12) | 2.3 (0–12) | 1.1 (0–5) | 55 (1893–2026) |
| Bergen | 8.2 (0–21) | 5.4 (0–14) | 3.5 (0–10) | 2.4 (0–8) | 1.2 (0–5) | 155 (1846–2026) |
| Warren | 10.2 (4–16) | 5.7 (2–11) | 4.1 (1–7) | 2.9 (1–5) | 1.3 (0–3) | 11 (2013–2026) |
Average days per season, with the lightest and heaviest winter on record in parentheses. A day that drops six inches is counted in every row it clears, so the columns are thresholds, not slices.
What the last twenty winters look like
Sussex 9.3, Passaic 8.2, Morris 6.5, Bergen 6.8 days of an inch or more, against 10.3, 10.5, 8.4, 8.2 across the full record. Small storms have thinned out at all four stations with twenty winters to compare against. The six-inch line has not moved with them: Sussex averages 1.9 big storms a winter over the last twenty against 1.7 across its whole record, and Passaic 1.8 against 1.6. Morris is the one that has not, at 1 against 1.1. Fewer pushes, same heavy storms, is a different operating year than the totals alone suggest, and it is the argument for a contract that covers the storm rather than a per-push rate that rewards a quiet January.
What this means for your snow budget
Look at any county above: back-to-back mild winters, then a season with two to four times the snow. Per-storm contracts feel cheap in the mild years and then blow up the budget in the heavy one. A seasonal flat rate priced from this history smooths that out: you pay for the average winter, we absorb the brutal one. That's the whole idea behind how we price.
Methodology
Totals are summed from daily snowfall observations in NOAA's GHCN-Daily dataset for the stations named above (NWS Cooperative Observer and CoCoRaHS networks; Bergen County uses Newark Liberty International, the nearest station with a continuous long-term record). A "season" runs July through June. Seasons with substantial missing observations are excluded, which is also why some stations show fewer seasons than years spanned. Snowfall varies locally with elevation, especially in the highlands; treat these as representative, not property-specific. Data retrieved July 2026. Storm counts in the table above come from the same daily observations, over the seasons at each station with a complete November-through-March record, which is why the winters counted there differ from the seasons counted in the totals; the script that produces them is tools/snow_events.py.
Want your property priced from this data?
Free walkthrough, seasonal proposal built from your county's actual snowfall history.