Sure the typical snowstorm is much smaller than 22 inches, smaller even than ten or maybe even 5.
But that has nothing to do with my point. If 20+ inch snow storms average out to once in 6 years, 15+ inch snow storms happen more often than once every six years, and 10+ snow storms happen even more often. The fact that the typical snowstorm doesn't even reach 10 inches, and probably doesn't even come close, doesn't suggest that snow storms are binary, with something like multi-time a year 2 or 3 inch storms, and a 20 inch every 6 years. You don't get that, instead you get a range of different depths, and as you get larger and larger the snowstorms of that size or bigger become rarer.
22 inches of snow in an average season says very little about how common major snow storms are. You could have 2 11 inch snow storms every year (or 3 7.33 inch, if that's enough to be "major"), for two (or 3, or more some years) major snow storms a year, or you could almost never have major snow storms, and still have a 22 inch average. Or You could have a 44 inch monster every other year and then a year with no snow. None of those are actually the case, it doesn't follow some very simple pattern like that, but they all would be possible if all you had was the average. The average can not tell you major snowstorms are rare unless its so low that it would take many years of average snowfall to make one major storm. |
