With our first hot spell underway and having finally turned the corner from a seemingly endless winter, what better time than now to examine the past season’s snowfall and put it in perspective?

For a second straight year, it was a pretty sad winter if you like snow. The totals at the “big three” climate locations in our area, at Reagan National Airport, Dulles Airport and Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport, were 50 to 75 percent of normal.

National posted 7.8 inches (normal is 15.4 inches), Dulles 11.9 inches (normal is 22.0 inches) and BWI 15.4 inches (normal is 20.1 inches). About half of that snow fell on the first full day of spring.

Until that storm on March 21, it hardly snowed. D.C. found itself in a snow hole repeatedly, with flakes flying all around it but not in the metro region itself.

The March 21 snowstorm pushed the winter’s snow tally from historically low to simply low. The District, based on measurements taken at National Airport, went from having its 11th least snowy winter on record to the 26th least snowy.

Even with the improvement at the end, the 7.8 inches still ranked in the lowest 20 percent of all years. Pretty bad for snow lovers.

The weirdness of plentiful cold but little snow

The underwhelming snow totals complemented a winter best recalled as weird. It seemed to go on forever and was cold — in fits — but also completely disappeared at times. Recall the abnormally warm February, for the second year in a row.

The warm February aside, we had plenty of chances for snow, but the atmosphere failed to capitalize.

The cold air we need for it to snow was plentiful to end December and start January and then again in March.

At times, the cold was too much. While it cannot ever really be “too cold to snow,” an intense Arctic air mass parked over the northern United States suppressed the storm track to Washington’s south at times, lowering the risk of a big snow event.

The D.C. snow hole proved quite real. Richmond’s 12.4 inches and Virginia Beach’s 13.0 inches both bested D.C.’s total. In fact, much of the East Coast witnessed near or above normal snowfall in the winter. Just not our area.

How much snow fell away from the airports?

While the airports are fairly reflective of the overall snowfall range in the general area, they fail to capture variability from neighborhood to neighborhood. We need more data!

Data shortcomings aside, we were able to cobble enough together to look at some winners and losers locally.

From south to north, the immediate D.C. area saw about 8 to 20 inches. Single digit totals were fairly common along and near the Potomac River to the south of the city.

Some of the bigger numbers concentrated to the northeast of D.C., toward Baltimore. Totals around Columbia, Md., were around 19 inches, with about 18 inches in Elkridge.

As is often the case around here, elevation mattered. Within a county radius of the District, we found the highest totals in Clarksburg, Md., where 22.5 inches fell, and in Damascus, Md., which checked in with 20.2 inches.

In the high country of northern Maryland near the border with Pennsylvania, totals of two to three feet were fairly common, which is not far from normal.

Why so little snow fell

The below normal snowfall output in Washington was typical for a La Niña winter, when ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean are colder than normal. La Niña winters are often characterized by fast-moving, moisture-starved systems tracking across our region.

As the winters of 2009-10 and 2016-2017 remind us, D.C.’s biggest snows tend to occur during El Niño.

Although the winter of 2017-18 hung on a long time this year, it left many in the region longing for more. The murmurs of patterns that might favor El Niño next winter are already starting. Perhaps we are due (wink, wink).

Katie Wheatley is a GIS analyst for EA Engineering, Science and Technology in Hunt Valley, Md.

Capital Weather Gang’s Jason Samenow contributed to this report.