No measurable snow has ever fallen after April 27 in Philly. What happened to those 18 to 30 inches?

Saturday marks a final milepost in what passed for the snow season in Philly. It was on this date in 1967 that the city dug its way out of a 0.1-inch snowfall, its latest officially measurable snow event in records dating to the winter of 1884-85.

With 100% of the flakes counted, the official 11.2 inches at Philadelphia International Airport was half the seasonal average — but 37.3 times more than what fell in the winter of 2022-23.

For Philly snow lovers, it mostly was a case of lather, rinse, and defeat, as the copious precipitation and the sparse cold air just had a hard time meeting. For the snow loathers, it was another win: Only one other six-winter period — the one that ended in 1931-32 — had less snow than the last six winters.

What happened to those snow forecasts that ranged from 18 to 30 inches? Global warming, El Niño, nonlinear chaos, the Eagles’ shocking late-season collapse, all the above?

Superheat a continent-size patch of equatorial Pacific and bake it to a state of El Niño and that’s going to have cosmic effects on west-to-east winds carrying weather to the United States, meteorologists agree.

Teasing out that influence from other factors is another matter.

Paul Pastelok, the veteran long-range forecaster with AccuWeather Inc., noted that a strong El Niño such as this one, which persisted through the winter, correlates with near-to-above-normal wetness in the East, with “generally overwhelming” supplies of mild air.

The lack of “consistent snowpack” in the Great Lakes and southern Canada allowed cold-air masses to modify over the bare ground.

The El Niño signature was evident in winter precipitation patterns across the nation, but with some puzzling exceptions, said Nat Johnson, researcher with the Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory in Princeton. The precipitation totals in the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast, by his reckoning, were on the high sides for El Niño.

Said Judah Cohen, polar scientist with Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Massachusetts, “I am really not sure how much we can blame El Niño for the lackluster winter.”

Some parts of the world had actual winter as the polar vortex on occasion oozed southward from the Arctic. It just didn’t spend much time around here.

”The polar vortex had more of a splash over Europe sending much of the cold in spurts there,” said Pastelok.

Scandinavia and parts of Asia were frigid, said Cohen, and it was so cold in Mongolia that the nation had “unprecedented livestock death.”

The region had one cool spell in late March, but by then the snow game was pretty much over, the net result being a tough year for the snow forecasts.

AccuWeather had called 18 to 24 inches for Philly. When 6abc meteorologists Cecily Tynan and Adam Joseph presented it, they did warn that it was a “low confidence” forecast.

WeatherBell Analytics was predicting 30 inches, and Joe Bastardi, the former long-range forecaster at AccuWeather, saw temperatures slightly below normal, “and the worry is it will be colder.” Not to worry: It was one of the milder winters on record.

Weather.com eschewed the snow-prediction business. But while it called for above-normal temperatures for the winter, it said February would be colder than average. The month finished 4.2 degrees above normal.

Kathy Orr and her colleagues at Fox29 voted for 26 inches. They also predicted seven “grocery store runs.”

That may have missed by about seven.