While visiting Sean Kirst’s forum at syracuse.com/kirst and chatting about the Golden Snowball contest a post showed up from one of the members there, creditsuisse. He offered up the best stats I have ever seen to all of us that cover tons of the city’s in the US and even Canada. Chris is his real name and he lives in the North Syracuse area. It is by far the most complete list I have come across while researching city snowfall amounts and even Chris admits that it could be flawed a little which is completely understandable for the fact that if you try and research certain data online, a lot of the time you will get conflicting reports. That said if you see something that might be off then just drop us an email or leave a message on the blog here at GSB and we will pass the information on to Chris who will update his stats.

Chris’s web page is at http://reinventcny.tripod.com/ and if your a snow stats freak like myself and many others, get ready to awed. I know I was and I can’t imagine the hours, days and weeks that probably went into researching all that data. Chris said that with his rankings “incorporated cities” is the criteria for getting on his snow totals list. He has the cities broken down as follows;

* Snowiest US Cities over 1,000 in population
* Snowiest US Cities over 10,000 in population
* Snowiest US Micropolitan and Metropolitan Areas
* Top 10 Snowiest US Metropolitan Areas
* Top 5 Snowiest US Cities over 100,000 in population
* Top 5 Snowiest US Metropolitan Areas over 1 Million
* Canada and the US

An example of one of the lists Chris has put together is below and check out his website at http://reinventcny.tripod.com/ for all the US city snowfall totals.

Snowiest US Cities over 1,000 in population

1) 350.0 Truckee, CA 15,000
2) 328.0 Valdez AK 4,000
3) 250.0 Munising, MI 2,000
4) 179.8 Marquette, MI (airport) 173.3 Marquette, MI (city) 19,000
5) 177.0 Gladstone, MI 5,000
6) 177.0 Iron River, MI 2,000
7) 173.3 Steamboat Springs, CO 9,000
8) 153.3 Oswego, NY 18,000
9) 153.0 Rome, NY 35,000
10) 149.6 Gaylord, MI 3,000
11) 141.0 Ishpeming,MI 6,000
12) 141.0 Negaunee, MI 4,000
13) 140.0 Fulton, NY 11,000
14) 135.0 Crystal Falls, MI 1,000
15) 133.1 Manistique, MI 3,000
16) 131.7 Escanaba, MI 13,000
17) 131.2 Sault Ste. Marie, MI 16,000
18) 128.6 Caspian, MI 1,000
19) 125.0 Traverse City, MI 14,000
20) 125.4 Iron Mountain, MI 8,000
21) 125.0 Kingsford , MI 5,000
22) 125.0 Norway, MI 2,000
23) 122.0 Haines, AK 2,000
24) 120.0 Boyne City, MI 3,000
25) 118.0 Cordova, AK 2,000
26) 117.0 Charlevoix, MI 3,000
27) 115.0 Caribou, ME 8,000
28) 114.9 Oneida, NY 10,000
29) 114.9 Sherill, NY 3,000
30) 113.8 Auburn, NY 28,000
31) 114.0 Watertown, NY 26,000
32) 111.9 Syracuse, NY 147,000 (airport)
33) 111.6 Presque Isle, ME 9,000
34) 108.2 Utica, NY 60,000
35) 108.0 Lander, WY 7,000
36) 101.6 Calais, ME 3,000
37) 101.0 Juneau, AK 30,000
38) 100.3 Rochester, NY 219,000
39) 100.3 Flagstaff, AZ 53,000
40) 98.7 Geneva, NY 13,000
41) 97.0 Buffalo, NY 292,000

Thanks again Chris for sharing all the great city snow totals with us here at goldensnowball.com and once again, WOW! Don’t forget if you see a mistake or find another city that should be on the list, let us know so we can pass it along to Chris to keep his list updated. Have a great week all and look for snow throughout the week.

Snow totals stats source

I had a dream last night that it snowed a couple of days ago and Syracuse got something like 11 inches. But then when I woke up I looked out the window and there wasn’t 11 inches of snow. Just a little bit here and there in the yard. What a great dream it was. In other words,

What the (add your own cuss word here)heck happened to the snow? How can we have 11 inches of snow on the ground a day and a half ago and now practically nothing? The bigger question is why did I even bother to shovel the snow? I never had a chance to really play in it like I wanted to. Ok, enough of my whining.

Cold air is in the forecast for next week and early reports suggest that it might actually stick around this time which should help the skiing places out. Rumors are going all around about some big time snow coming our way. My sister informed me that the farmers almanac has a blizzard forecasted and a couple of other places are saying the same thing. Too early to tell what lies ahead but looking at what’s going on down in Texas, where early predictions are maybe a couple of inches of freezing rain I think anything can happen at this point.

My prediction is that the ski resorts will be set for awhile beginning right around Monday. Have a great weekend all!

Once again, Look out Buffalo, Here come Da Cuse. Now we need Rochester and Binghamton to get their snow season going. Syracuse continues to sled a little bit closer to Buffalo plowing another 10 inches away from the lead that Buffalo held. Syracuse’s final snow number for yesterday were 10.6 inches compared to Buffalo’s 0.4 inches of new snow. So far since the October snow storm that Buffalo had, Syracuse has been able to cut about a 2 1/2 foot lead down to a 10.1 inch lead with plenty of winter left for all of the city’s to step up.

For those of you cheering for Buffalo the bookies probably still have you as the favorites so I wouldn’t lose the faith. The lakes are still warm and the lake effect snow machine is still going to be cranking out the snow. Syracuse needs to keep sneaking up on the leader while they aren’t paying attention because Buffalo is due big time to get in on the lake effect. Last season Buffalo was just miles within winning the contest. Within miles of winning meaning that most of the towns just south of Buffalo were getting pounded throughout the season, but they just couldn’t seem to get it to come up a little more north to get in on the fun.

As for Rochester it was pretty much the same thing. Snow all around them but missing the city. That’s one of the funny things about lake effect snow bands. A little shift this way or that way and one town gets it were another town 5 miles away gets nothing. We were waiting in the forum for Tug Hill Tina to visit and let us know how much she received expecting to hear a couple of feet. She and her family are in the Champion area. Tina’s post is below which sums it up best as to how peculiar the snow bands can be:

“Such a strange thing. I got nothing, zip, zilch, nada………..now about 30 minutes away from me near the Tug they got nailed. The cool thing though to report is my drive from Lowville to Champion. I wish I had my camera with me to show all of you the lake effect wall of clouds dumping on the Tug while I was under intense sunshine. It was like I had entered a Twilight zone-I’m driving along on dry pavement and then wham it was as if someone had drawn a line of the highway, complete white out and slipping and a sliding all over the place. I flipped a U and went the other way to clear skies. Such a cool weather phenom!”

Have a Great Day All!

5:35PM UPDATE –

The stats were just posted by NOAA. The new stats are updated up to 4 – 5 pm for the citys. See the chart above! Syracuse’s totals are a little disappointing but I’m not greedy. Ok, so I am but at least Syracuse has melted Buffalo’s lead to just over a foot of snow now. Believe it or not the total snowfall for today for Syracuse sets a date record going back to 1959 which stood at 8.3 inches. So far today DaCuse reports in at 8.6 inches. Below are the totals so far for today’s snow.

Syracuse – 8.6
Rochester – 1.1
Buffalo – 0.5
Albany – 0.4
Binghamton – 0.3

With it being so long since our last snowfall that little kid feeling hit again last night and real early this morning. This had the same feeling as the first snowfall of the season. I looked out the window right before I headed upstairs to bed last night and it was just starting to come down. Then for whatever reason I woke up at around 5:30 this morning and looked out the window from my bed and saw that beautiful shine of white gold on the roof and with the help of a distant light I could see that it was still coming down pretty good here in the Syracuse area. Knowing there wasn’t a chance of falling right back to sleep I headed to the bay window in the living room to get a better look.

Yeah I know it’s not like we have never seen snow around here. But this is really only the second decent snowfall for us all season and the first one was way back in December. While looking out the window I noticed that my kids never put the trash out last night. *%$%$@%*64 I said to myself as I threw on some clothes and a jacket and headed out the door to put the trash out. Of course it probably could of waited till later in the morning but I think it was an excuse to get out there and feel it. To feel the lake effect snow whipping all around the neighborhood. This time real snow too, not the fake cotton stuff that’s now burried under the real snow.

Being a night owl normally and only seeing 5:30 – 6:00 am when I work late on the computer it was weird to see what goes on. A great sight to see was all the plow trucks flying up and down the street with the flashing lights as they headed down different streets to plow some of the driveways in the neighborhood. I’m sure by the end of our typical snow season it’s probably tough even for them to get up and head out in the cold to plow peoples driveways. My bet is the excitement was there for them this morning also. Sure they probably are looking forward to the money they make but my bet is it was still fun to get out and play in it this morning.

Anyways, I shoveled a path down the driveway and put the trash out, minus the cotton snow of course 😉 I figured while I am out there I might as well get a jump on the driveway and started to shovel it. After about five minutes of shoveling I hear the sound of another shovel scraping the driveway across the street. For me to be out there before 6am and shoveling is one thing, but for there to be 2 of us right across the street from each other that early was just plain crazy. Of course the only crazy part was that I was out there. I think it’s normal for my neighbors to be up and about that early. As I get near the bottom of the driveway I yell silently (is that possible) to Julie across the street. “Morning Julie, Ya Gotta Love it Huh, Finally Some Snow” in which she replies something like “Uh, No Not Really, Are Ya Crazy”. I just took it in stride and continued to shoveling figuring that Julie is not a morning person and it was better to leave it at that for now. Most likely when we shovel later she will be liking it more, shoveling it the second time in a day.

More on the neighborhood. I look at another neighbors, Frank and Donna’s house, next door to Julie’s and scratch my head. His driveway was already shoveled. Here it is not even 6:00 am yet and Frank beat both Julie and myself to the snow. So here I am thinking I am going to be the first one in my neighborhood to play in the snow and I was wrong. I looked at my next door neighbor and Cheryl’s lights were on. Now I start thinking to myself that I don’t think this is a normal everyday occurrence for all the neighborhood to be up this early. I think this is the kind of effect that a good blast of snowfall has on us big kids 😉

Enjoy the snow all and look for an update once the totals come in later in the day and evening.

Was it the snow dance or perhaps trying reverse psychology on mother nature? Maybe it was the threat of NYCO to put the Snow God back in the closet or maybe it was just our weather finally doing what it is suppose to do this time of year. SNOW! Whatever the reason sfter one of the lamest, most pitiful snow seasons so far that I can remember, snow is finaly in the air, and on the ground. Up to the north snow is on the ground so fire up the sleds while it’s there. Some unofficial reports are coming in the forum that the Tug Hill area is showing anywheres from 12 – 18 inches and the snow continues to fall. I’m still waiting for Tug Hill Tina to give us a report in the forum as to how much snow she has on the ground there. ZR800 posted in the Golden Snowball forum the following from NOAA:

Other reports so far from the Buff NWS…
Colden 10″
Warsaw 11″
N Oseola 9″
Portagville 6″

None of the GSB city’s are reporting snow from over night. Come tomorrow morning that will all change. NOAA just updated it’s current warnings at http://www.weather.gov/view/prodsByState.php?state=ny&prodtype=warnings

Right now they are predicting 10 – 16 inches in persistant snow areas meaning if the lake effect bands tend to sit in spots or keep devoloping in certain spots, look out. My guess is that all the city’s will see something by morning and I think out of the 5 golden snowball cities, Syracuse is going to win this round with Rochester coming in second.

On January 7th at approximately 10:34 pm this seasons first snow dance was performed. Now all we can do is sit and wait to see what happens. Having a 90% or so success rate in past years I’m expecting that percentage to go up. As I mentioned in our forum I get a little nervous each and every time I perform the dance. Nothing could be worse than me over doing it, doing it wrong or God forbid doing the wrong dance and waking up and seeing on the news that a freak Tidal Wave hit the North East or something.

Right now it is windy and snow is in the forecast. Mostly for the Oswego and Tug Hill area. The dance won’t take credit unless the totals are way over what is predicted seeing how it was already in the forecast before the dance was done. That said, the dance was done to try and bring a sustained cold air mass to the GSB cities and also the surrounding area so that the snowmobilers and skiers can try and salvage the time that is left. Also as pointed out by TioTonto at Syracuse.com I have been leaving out the ice fishing people. The shores haven’t even started to freeze over on the lakes and I am sure they are itching to get out there on the ice.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if ice fishing is a separate permit? Are you allowed to fish from the shores or from a boat if there isn’t any ice on the lake?

Something scary happened while performing the snow dance last night. I almost thought I was having a hallucination. While performing the ritual I looked around and saw what appeared to be tiny little spots of snow about the size of a small snowball blowing around the yard and the neighborhood. I’m good at what I do but not that good. After a minute or so of thinking I was that good one of the white snowball sized pieces blew against me. As I picked it up I realized what it was. My sisters stopped by this weekend to help take the Christmas decorations down. One of them threw away what my son puts around our Nativity scene every year. Cotton, and lots of it. It turns out that the wind blew over the trash can and all the cotton, tons of it had escaped. So to my neighbors, my bad and if you see some fake snow blowing around my apologies. I tried to gather it up but with the wind the way it was it just wasn’t gonna happen. Just pretend it’s real snow and think of it as more of a late Christmas present from the snowman or better yet, the idiot that lives at the top of the street. Have a Great Week All!