The weather team at WUSA9, led by legendary meteorologist Topper Shutt has released its 2024-2025 Winter Outlook, which has the highest snow totals of the outlooks we’ve looked at so far this fall. We have already broken down meteorologist Mike Thomas and FOX 5’s Winter Outlook and Doug Kammerer and the NBC 4 Storm Team’s outlook, so let’s see what channel 9 has to say.
Of the three outlooks we’ve looked at so far, WUSA9 is going with the highest snow totals, predicting 10-20” for DC and areas immediately surrounding it and 20-30” for parts of Montgomery County like Gaithersburg, Germantown, Clarksburg, and Damascus. Most of Loudoun County, all of Frederick County, and part of Howard County are all included in the 20-30” range.
WUSA9 notes that last winter may not have been particularly exciting in terms of snow, but also wasn’t the worst in terms of total snowfall with D.C. receiving 8 inches of snow and Dulles recording 11.7 inches. The winter before that (2022-2023) saw D.C. and Dulles accumulating just 0.40 inches of snow, significantly below our usual expectations. In fact, only two other winters have seen less snowfall.
They credit the lower totals in recent years to climate change and urbanization, our winters are getting warmer, but also note that D.C., Dulles and BWI had a combined total of over 128 inches (over 10.5 feet) of snow in just one month in February 2010. This year we are in a weak La Niña pattern, which usually means a warmer than average winter
WUSA9 is going with December 28th as the date of our first snow and have shared some specific predictions for areas like Rockville (19 inches), Fairfax (18 inches), Hagerstown (32 inches), and more. Their full outlook with additional details can be seen here.