At a Glance

Some cities were either persistently cold, snowy, or both in 2017-18.Others suffered through winter in a much different way.

Winter 2017-18 is officially over, and for five U.S. cities, it was a particularly harsh one.

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There was no shortage of winter highlights, including:

An unusual Deep South snow in early December,. A in Buffalo just days after Benji. A for many in the Midwest, East and South. One of the most intense western Atlantic cyclones, , pummeled the Northeast after blanketingthe South. A , including Chicago, in early February. A in less than three weeks along the East Coast.

Given all that, it would seem a formidable task to find five cities that took it on the chin the most this winter.

With help from the , we examined those areas with a particularly persistent combination of snow and/or cold this past winter.

Two locations, however, made our top-five list for reasons unrelated to either snow or cold.

5. Amarillo, Texas

How did a city that saw only its second winter season on record without measurable snowfallmake a worst city list during a markedly warmer-than-average winter?

In a word, drought.

As of this column, Amarillo measured a grand total of .01 inches of precipitation since Oct. 13 – one-hundredth of an inch in over five months.

The Texas Panhandle city and had its, according to the Southeast Regional Climate Center.

This part of the southern High Plains was : Death Valley, California.

By March 20, a large swath of the southern High Plains and Desert Southwest , according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

This lack of ground moisturedried vegetation and set the stage for wildfires from late January into February and March.

4. Erie, Pennsylvania

When a city crushes its seasonal snowfall record by 3.5 feet, it should easily be No. 1 on the list, right?

This northwestern Pennsylvania city on the shore of Lake Erie got a , picking up 33.8 inches of lake-effect snow on Christmas Day and another 26.5 inches the following day.

It was a two-day record for the city and helped Erie to a record 192.3 inches of seasonal snow, as of March 26 – more than 7 feet above the season's average.

As expected, the snow piles around homes, sidewalks, driveways and streets .

Some Erie residents took this holiday crushing in good stride, even grilling out and having a beach party.

Erie also set a record for its snowiest March on record, picking up roughly 3 feet of snow as of the time of this column.

So, why did we rank ErieNo. 4?

First, there is some , as Weather Underground's Christopher Burt detailed in early January.

Winter temperatures weren't that cold, overall, coming in just .

In hindsight, that part wasn't so bad.

3. Scituate, Massachusetts

We could have chosen virtually any city along Massachusetts's eastern shore this winter.

While Boston's Logan Airportpicked up over a foot more snow than an average season, this ranking isn't really about the snow;rather, it was the battering winds and coastal flooding.

A home in Scituate, Massachusetts, in the aftermath of Winter Storm Riley in early March 2018.

(Melissa Pullis Wakeman)

Just after New Year's Day, clobbered the East Coast, leading to a record storm tide at Boston Harbor, damaging the seawall in Scituate and flooding 75 homes in Winthrop.

Then camethe March siege of .

The first of those, , whipped southeastern New England with wind gusts up to 93 mphand hammered the coast with flooding over multiple high tide cycles. Less thantwo months after Grayson, Riley pushed the .

Winter Storms , and then then each took their turn lashing the coastto varying degrees.

Following this barrage, to discuss solutions to coastal flooding in parts of the city, which could include the construction of a barrier wall in Boston Harbor.

2. Montecito, California

Damaged homes, mud and debris near Randall Road after the Montecito debris flow of January 9, 2018.

(Before Image: Google Maps - After Image: Ventura County Aviation Unit)

First came fire, then rain, then a deadly mudflow in a terrible stretch of just overone month.

On Dec. 4, the Thomas Fire was sparked and burned aggressively for days in Santa Barbara County, becoming . The blaze charred over 440 square miles and destroyed 1,063 structures.

Less than five weeks later, a deluge of rain running off the giant fire's scarred ground produced a deadly debris flow of mud and rocks through neighborhoods in the city of Montecito, claiming 21 lives and inundating a stretch of the 101 Freeway.

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Worries about additional debris flows prompted separate evacuations in and .

If that wasn't enough, despite heavier March snowfall, the Sierra snowpack critical for the state's water supply as of late March, though .

1. Havre, Montana

We had to give the nod for worst winter city to a location that was both well above average for snowfall and very cold relative to a typical winter.

This town near the Canadian border in the Big Sky State won in a landslide.

For Havre, it started well before winter – barely into fall.

in HavreOct. 2-3, topping the city's two-day October snowstorm recordthat had stood since 1898and .

That was only an appetizer.

After a snowy December and January, winter kicked into overdrive on the Montana Rocky Mountain Front in February.

From Feb. 12-27, the National Weather Service in nearby Great Falls, Montana, for parts of the immediate Rocky Mountain Front east of Glacier National Park covering for either blizzard or ground blizzard (no falling snow, just blowing snow) conditions.

Thisincessant February siegeleft , isolating the towns of Babb, Heart Butte and Starr School, which prompted a .

The snow was so deep in parts of northern Montana in mid-February that.

Havre crushedits previous snowiest February in 1978 by over a foot, measuring a whopping 31.8 inches, over five times their average February snowfall (5.8 inches).

Through March 26, only 1981-82 had a snowier winter than 2017-18 in Havre, where the season's snowfall-to-date – 82.6 inches – was just over 4 feet above average.

It was the seventh-coldest winter on record in Havre, with an average temperature of only 8.6 degrees, coldest since the aforementionedwinter of 1981-82.

By late March, the National Weather Service estimated that , or 50 feet, of snow had fallen this season in parts of Glacier National Park, with more snow yet to fall the rest of spring.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been an incurable weather geek since a tornado narrowly missed his childhood home in Wisconsin at age 7. Follow him on and , and check out The Weather Channel podcast on iOS, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.