The winter of 2009/2010 will long be remembered for a series of remarkable snow storms that buried the Delaware Valley. For that matter, this past winter brought unusually extensive snow cover to much of North America and Eurasia. Why so much snow? How unusual were these events? What might the coming decades bring in the snow department? All will be explored through an examination of station and satellite snow observations and modeled climate projections.

Dr. David A. Robinson is chairman of the Department of Geography at Rutgers University, and also serves as New Jersey's State Climatologist. Dave received a BS in geology from Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA and went on to Columbia University where he earned a doctorate in earth sciences. He then became an associate research scientist at their Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory prior to coming to Rutgers in 1989. Dave's research interests are in applied climate, especially related to New Jersey, and in climate dynamics and change, particularly focused on global snow cover. He is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and sits on climate advisory committees for the National Academy of Sciences and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He has chaired two National Research Council panels and the American Meteorological Society's Polar Meteorology and Oceanography Committee, and is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists. Dave recently received a NOAA Environmental Hero award, as well as the Lifetime Achievement award of the Association of American Geographer's Climate Specialty Group.