Winter Is Coming: When The First Snow Usually Falls In Your State

Cheyenne, Wyo., usually records its first measurable snow of the season around Oct. 9, earlier than the main airport in any other state on our map. Anchorage (Oct. 17), Billings, Mont. (Oct. 20) and Denver (Oct. 28) are the only other places where the typical first snow comes before November.

Across the northern Plains and the Great Lakes, the first snow usually arrives in November, from Nov. 5 in Fargo, N.D., to Nov. 20 in Chicago and Nov. 21 in Detroit. The East Coast runs about a month behind places at a similar latitude inland. Columbus, Ohio, typically sees its first snow on Nov. 22, while Philadelphia, at nearly the same latitude, waits until Dec. 19 and New York until Dec. 14.

Most of the South waits until January. The typical first snow comes on Jan. 9 in Little Rock, Ark., Jan. 11 in Jackson, Miss., and Jan. 16 in Charlotte, N.C., which went four of the last 30 winters without any. Nine states are marked rare because their main airport recorded snow in fewer than half of the winters on record. Houston had measurable snow in 5 of 30 winters, Las Vegas in 4 and Orlando in none.

Anchorage is already ahead of schedule this year, with its first snow on Oct. 1, 16 days before its usual date. One airport can't describe a whole state, and mountain towns in states like Colorado, Utah and Montana usually see snow weeks before the cities on this map.

How we did this: We used daily snowfall records from NOAA's Global Historical Climatology Network for one major airport in each state, usually the one serving its largest city. For each winter from 1995–96 to 2024–25, measured from July 1 to June 30, we found the first day with at least 0.1 inch of snow and took the median across the winters that had snow. Winters with fewer than 240 days of observations between September and May were left out, and Denver's airport record starts in 2006.