New Englanders have been positively inundated with snow.
After a string of mild winters, February’s record-setting blizzard dumped more than two to three feet of powder across Massachusetts and Rhode Island. That’s on top of a January snowstorm that was the biggest in years.
So how do these storms square with global warming and our increasingly mild New England winters? Instead of a blast from winters past, scientists said the recent heavy snowfall could be a harbinger of the future.
Here’s a hint why: It’s about the clouds.
What is happening to snow in New England?
New England winters are trending shorter, milder, and with significantly less snow cover.
In Massachusetts, winters have gained nearly 8 degrees Fahrenheit since the start of the past century, according to a study coauthored by Stephen Young, a professor of environmental sustainability at Salem State University. The same paper found that the state has lost about 30 days with snow on the ground annually since the early 2000s.
Nonetheless, over the last half century, annual total snowfall has risen in Boston and many locations along the coast of New England, according to an analysis from Climate Central, a nonprofit that conducts climate change research. This winter is now the ninth snowiest on record for the city.
The number of major snowstorms on record that produced 20 inches or more has also shot up, Young said. He found that in Boston, there have been 10 storms over the past four decades that have exceeded that mark. But in the years prior to that — from 1900 to 1985 — there were only three. Though the methods for measuring snowfall have changed, he said, the difference is significant enough to indicate a trend.
“It appears that snow days are not history yet,” Young said.
Wait ... how can climate change increase snowfall?
The simple answer is by driving up precipitation.
Warmer air can hold more moisture, and higher ocean surface temperatures lead to quicker evaporation. Some climate scientists compared it to creating a bigger sponge that can hold more moisture. When that sponge collides with cold, Arctic air, the atmospheric conditions squeeze out the water as more snow.
“That’s the fuel that powers these coastal storms,” said Daniel Bader, a senior staff associate at Columbia Climate School.
An emerging piece of the puzzle is the link between nor’easters and climate change. A study published in 2025 by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that the maximum wind speeds and hourly precipitation rates of the most intense nor’easters were rising. They warned of an increased risk of future “super-nor’easters,” storms that could cause “paralyzing snowfalls.”
Ambarish Karmalkar, a geosciences assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island, said the findings make sense in light of what scientists know about how nor’easters strengthen. As storms pass over warmer oceans that have been heated by climate change, they intensify and pick up more moisture. If the air is cold enough, that moisture gets dumped as snow over land.
Scientists are also studying whether climate change played a role in the bursts of Arctic air that dipped into the Northeast this winter, creating opportunities for snow. Some research has linked global warming with disrupting the rings of fast-moving wind that circle the Arctic, freeing frigid air to sweep into New England, but this work is contested.
So is climate change to blame for the blizzard?
It’s too soon to say. Scientists have become better at linking climate change to specific extreme weather events, a field of research known as attribution science. But linking snowstorms to global warming remains tricky.
Shel Winkley, a meteorologist at Climate Central, pointed to several reasons why: The physics of major snowstorms are complex, patchy historical records before 1970 make it harder to draw comparisons, natural weather patterns (such as Arctic air incursions) can mask underlying climate signals, and small temperature differences have a big impact on what kind of precipitation falls.
Mathew Barlow, a climate science professor at University of Massachusetts Lowell, said the most straightforward way to understand whether global warming played a role in the blizzard is to think about climate change tipping the scales.
“It’s always possible for a strong storm to happen by chance, but I think we’ve substantially upped the odds,” he said.
For example, the sea surface temperature of the waters where the storm picked up moisture was higher than average, allowing for more evaporation.
When the storm was brewing, the Gulf of Mexico was about 3 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit above average for the time of year, a difference that Climate Central calculated was up to 60 times more likely because of climate change. In the western Atlantic Ocean, temperatures were 1 to 2 degrees above average, which is about 10 to 30 times more likely due to climate change.
Even if climate change did play a significant role in the blizzard, we may not see historic storms like this forever.
“Eventually, we’re going to be too warm to have these big snowstorms,” said Young, the Salem State professor. “But we’re currently in this window where we’re getting these punches every now and then of heavy snow because of the warming of our environment.”
Kate Selig can be reached at kate.selig@globe.com. Follow her on X @kate_selig.