by Jimmy Nightingale

Created on: April 12, 2011   Last Updated: April 13, 2011

The tulip and daffodil displays of the botannical gardens at Cincinnati Zoo are awash with colour in April.  Some 92,000 blooms take advantage of the spring sunshine and warmer weather in this part of Ohio to wipe away the memories of a long, cold winter.  Elsewhere in Ohio though, an unseasonal cold snap brings out the tales of woe - shovelling mountainous snow drifts, narrow escapes from black ice and frozen pipes wreaking their wintery havoc.

Any unseasonal snowfall brings back these flood of memories.  Of harsher times when winter was something that didn't just happen, but was endured and survived.  Ask any Ohio native beyond a certain vintage, say in their 40s or older, and there is a fair bet that the Blizzard of '78 will feature high on their list of worst winters.  Every city in every state has their own tale of woe; severe winter weather events that caused vast amounts of damage and perhaps loss of life.  But extreme weather by itself does not mean that a particular location has the worst winter weather.  That accolade only derives from a lengthy track record of such events.

The list below is subjective.  What constitutes the 'worst winter weather' is certainly open to debate, however being a resident of any of the cities in this list is a tribute to the strength of character and the human spirit of the hardy residents whom take great pride in calling these cities their home. 

1.  Cleveland, Ohio
It may have been the epicentre of the Blizzard of '78, when barometric pressure dropped to an Ohio record low of 28.28 inches, but Cleveland receives its pride of place as having the worst winter weather in the United States (for urban centers with a population exceeding 1 million) courtesy of a triple whammy - it features high on the list of cold, wet and windy places.  In winter, the mean temperature for Cleveland sits at a balmy 28 degrees, considerably warmer than the second ranked city, but it makes up for it by being the third snowiest city in the country, with an average winter snowfall of 63.1 inches over an average of 48 days.  To cap things off, it is also the eighth windiest city in the United States with an average annual wind speed of 10.5 miles per hour, more than the city known as the Windy City, Chicago (10.3).  All in all, a wet, cold and windy place.  The Forest City may

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