Last month was the seventh snowiest January on record.

What You Need To Know

  • The Buffalo Airport picked up 52.1 inches of snow in January

  • It got as warm as 51 degrees last month

  • Two snowfall records broke during January

January marked the start of 2022, and what a snowy start to the new year! This was the seventh snowiest January in all of Buffalo’s history with 51.2 inches.

Entering January, Buffalo was almost two feet below normal in terms of snowfall. That deficit turned into a surplus, with the seasonal snowfall total running about 2 inches above average by the end of the month.

A big part of that was two separate days of record-breaking snowfall in the double digits. The first came on Jan. 6.

17.8 inches fell at the airport that day, obliterating the old daily record of just 7.3 inches from 1974. Not even two weeks later, we shattered another daily snowfall record, and it wasn’t too far off from Jan. 6.

Before this year, the Jan. 17 daily snowfall record stood at 8.3 inches from 1958. This time around, 17.6 inches stacked up at the airport.

Those two days will now go down as the second and third snowiest January day ever for Buffalo, just behind the 18.3 inches that fell on Jan. 11, 1982.

Interestingly enough, it was two different setups that broke those records. 

The first was a potent band of lake-effect that parked itself over the city. The second was a widespread, synoptic snow that put down roughly 1 to 2 feet across all of Western New York.

Those two days alone accounted for more than half of the snow that fell during the month of January. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a snowy month all around.

There were only two days the entire month where the Buffalo Airport didn’t report any measurable snow. Oddly enough, it was the last two days of January.

Not only that, but it was a cold first month of 2022. The monthly average temperature came in at 21.9 degrees. 

Compared to the last 30 years, that ended up being 3.6 degrees below average.

But it was an unusually mild start to the month. New Year's Day was the warmest day of January with a high of 51. 

There would only be 11 other days where Buffalo hit or exceeded that freezing mark of 32. Only two of those occurred during the second half of January.

On the flip side, low temperatures fell into the single digits twelve times last month. Buffalo saw its coldest day in nearly 3 years when it got down to one degree the morning of Jan. 22.

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