Thinking back on my childhood, I have vivid memories of playing for hours outside with the neighborhood kids in the dead of winter.

I was born in the late '80s and am the product of a '90s upbringing in Central New York.

I remember the winters being snowier. I was small and the snowbanks were so big.

Did my perception deceive me, or was there really more snow in the '90s compared to the last decade?

All the snow added up from the season of 1990-1991 to the season of 1999-2000 totals 1,307.9 inches. That's just shy of 109 feet!

Not surprisingly, the snowiest season was '92 to '93, when Syracuse got hit with a March snowstorm that dumped feet of snow.

To make the comparison simple, I dug into seasonal snow totals from the 2010-2011 season through 2019-2020.

Over this 10-season stretch, Syracuse picked up a total of 1,168.1 inches of snow, which is a little more than 97 feet.

The 2010-2011 season gave the 1992-1993 season a run for its money but ultimately fell short by 13.1 inches.

Total snowfall in Syracuse in the 1990s exceeded the total snowfall in the 2010s by 11 feet, 7.8 inches.

That means that in the 1990s we averaged almost 14 inches of more snow each season.

Additionally, two of the three snowiest seasons during these decades occurred in the 1990s. The 1992-1993 season was the snowiest and the 1995-1996 season was the third-snowiest.

On the flip side, two of the three least snowy seasons were in the 2010s. The 2011-2012 season was the least snowy and the 2015-2016 season took third place.

It seems as though my memory of snowier winters as a kid wasn't a matter of perception at all, but in fact reality.