At a Glance

Major March Northeast winter storms are few, relative to the core winter months.However, they have also been among the most widespread, heaviest events of any month.

Two of the three most expansive, heaviest Northeast snowstorms since the mid-1950s happened in March, rather than the core winter months of December, January or February.

(MORE: )

From 1956-2017, only threeof 34Northeast snowstorms attaining aCategory 3 or higher rating on the Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS), have occurred in March,according to NOAA's .

This NESIS scale, developed in 2004 by Paul Kocin, a National Weather Service meteorologist, and , the director of the National Weather Service, attempts to rank the impact of Northeast snowstorms based on snowfall amounts and the population affected.

(MORE: )

In general, widespread heavy snowfall over highly populated areas produces a highvalue for a given storm. Neither NESIS, norits regional version, the regional snowfall index (RSI), factor winds or time of day/day of the week in its assessment of impact.

That lone pair of March Northeast "major" snowstorms, however, makes up two of the three highest NESIS scale ratings in the entire list dating to 1956.

The clear front-runner is the infamous , which deposited a massive swath of 10 inches or more of snow from Alabama to Maine, among .

(MORE: )

Animation of weather maps during the March 1993 Superstorm as they aired on The Weather Channel.

Downed wires and lamp post in Greenwich Village after the Blizzard of 1888 in New York City.

(New York Historical Society Museum and Library)

but did bury areas from western North Carolina to New England in at least 10 inches of snow, crushing the northern suburbs of the New York Tri-State and eastern New England with over 20 inches of snow.

(MORE:Why March Brings the Most Variety of Extreme Weather in the U.S.)

Despite producing blizzard conditions in parts of the Appalachians, with up to 42 inches of snow, the will forever be remembered as the most extreme nor'easter on record for the Mid-Atlantic states, based on its coastal damage.

, dumping 25.4 inches of snow in Boston in just 24 hours. However, that storm wasn't expansive enough to rank high on the NESIS scale, .

(MORE: )

Perhaps the most crippling of all snowstorms to affect New York City also happened in March, which occurred before the underground subway system was built and well before the advent of snowplows.

hammered parts of New York, Connecticutand New Jersey with 40-50 inches of snow, with driftsover the tops of some homes. Travel was paralyzed for days. Four hundred people were killed either in the storm or in the cold aftermath.

As of this writing, 130years later, , one of only four March snowstorms to produce a foot or more of snow a the park in almost 150 years of records.

(MORE: )

The March jet stream is still powerful, owing to the temperature difference between more southern and northern latitudes.

With lingering arctic air plunging out of Canadaincreasingly mingling with warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, the stage is occasionally set for powerful snowstorms tracking up the East Coast.

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 .