Cold and Snow and a lot of it!!! After the the big snow bust for all of the Golden Snowball city’s yesterday I’m not as confident of my winter predictions but I’m going to stick with them. The deer are big again but the color on the caterpillars was light. I mentioned in another post that for whatever reason I haven’t been able to warm up this season. Some forecasters are predicting a warmer US this winter except for in the Northeast. I Think I am going to agree with them.

So if the deer are fat that means a rough winter. At least that’s what I have been told by Syracuse’s very own Dennis Brogan whose done it all including contributing to a book named “WINNING WITHOUT COMPROMISING YOURSELF”, stared in a movie, was the Dome ranger and the list goes on and on. Anyways after talking to my brother-in-law Buz, said the deer are pretty big this season which could mean a tough winter ahead. Not like he ever gets one but his sister Deb normally gets a couple of them ; )

A woman walking by the house as I was raking on Sunday kind of threw a con into my predictions for this season though. She told me that the orange stripe on the caterpillars were light this summer and she informed me that it means that a mild winter is ahead of us. For whatever reason I wanted to ask her if caterpillars shed their fur like animals do but I don’t know her well enough. I’ll have to do more research though on the color of a caterpillars orange stripe playing a part in predicting our winters before I buy it.

I’m looking at how the summer went and thinking we are still kind of in the same pattern. Mostly when it came time to golf my 9 holes on Friday nights a thunderstorm almost always seemed to pop up like clock work every week. The nice weekends were great and plentiful in NY for a change but when it came down it did come down. It didn’t last long but at times it was tense even if it was a pretty dry summer. Add all the scientific stuff I add to this forecast each year which I won’t get into because it’s probably too boring and over most peoples heads, OK, even mine and I think were in for a snowy season for the remainder of 2007 and most of the 2008 snow season. My winter outlook for 2007 – 2008 is cold and snowy but I think we will see several days, maybe more than normal where it will seem like Spring just when we think we can’t take the cold anymore.

The Golden Snowball City snow predictions are:

Syracuse -151 inches
Buffalo – 123 inches
Rochester – 121 inches
Binghamton – 106 inches
Albany – 72 inches

A side note is that even though I have Syracuse winning by almost 30 inches this season an upset would not surprise me at all. A new winner is due and I think this may be the season. Have a Great and More Importantly Safe Snowy Season Everyone and please drive carefully and remember “you see snow, drive slow”.

I’m not sure if everyone is aware of all the webcams in New York but there are quite a few of them and they are great for keeping up on the weather. I just checked one out in the Tug Hill Plateau area and all I can say to those who snowmobile it rev up those engines. You might be using them this weekend. Over a foot of snow is expected in the Tug Hill area I think from now until tomorrow evening. Tina from the forum says it’s coming down as I type. Check out the cam at http://www.northernchateau.com/webcam.html and you can see quite a bit has fallen so far.

Below are some ore web cams in the NY area and worth checking out to see if it’s snowing or not. One is from one of our forum members CNYWeather’s house and he has live streaming video on his site which he is still tweaking so bear with him as he fine tunes it. Tony, his real name is from the West Moreland area and he also has a 24 hour time lapse video which is pretty cool. You can check out the weather at http://www.cnyweather.com/webcam.php and give the live cam a shot to see if it’s working at http://www.cnyweather.com/livecam.php . The rest of the webcams are below which were posted by ZR800 and CNYweather from the forum. Some are streaming live and some are still frames which are updated frequently.

Here is a Downtown Syracuse cam for ya’s at Clinton Square. http://www.syracuse.com/clintoncam/

http://www.syracuse.com/destinycam/ Syracuse

http://www.northernchateau.com/webcam.html Tug Hill Area

http://www.wxnation.com/buffalo/ (Scroll down page) Has a bunch of web cams fro the Buffalo area.

http://www.instacam.com/search.asp?searchbox=ny&searchtype=state

http://24.97.183.50/index.html Has a great live feed from Oswego and right now you can watch them setting up the Christmas tree.

http://www.wunderground.com/webcams/index.html?state=NY A List of Cams

http://home.rochester.rr.com/rbowen2/ The Adirondack’s I believe.

http://webcams.holidayvalley.com/

http://northern-nys.com/webcams.htm

Snow wise not a whole lot is going on with the Golden Snowball cities Yet. Binghamton continues to hold onto the lead and a narrow one at that. I think by the end of this weekend maybe sooner we will see a new leader. Buffalo????? Have a great day all!

I was checking out some sites looking for some snow pictures and I came across one that caught my attention. Not a snow picture or anything like that. It’s a picture of our own favorite General Steve. A cute picture no doubt with Stevo holding a fish but it’s what he is wearing that caught my attention more than his catch of the day. At first glance I didn’t even notice it but then it caught my eye. Buffalo Steve is wearing an SU shirt. A Syracuse shirt. Is that even allowed in Buffalo after being spanked 4 years in a row in the Golden Snowball contest by Syracuse. All I can say is that I hope there aren’t any pictures of me in a Buffalo Bills shirt around from the past. All in fun of course and it’s nice to see Steve is a Syracuse fan

For all you snow forecasters out there I wanted to let you know that there is a contest going on at . Below is the info on the contest. Unfortunately Syracuse and their fake lake effect snow isn’t in the contest but it still sounds like a fun contest and The General finished first in the Rookie class last year.

Visit the Contest web site at http://www.newx-forecasts.com/

Follow the link to ‘Enter Season-total Forecast’
Forecast the ‘season-total snowfall’ for each station.
Email your forecast before the deadline.

Deadline: Friday, November 30, 2007 @ 11:59 PM EST

Forecast element: sum-total season snowfall
Forecast period: December 1, 2007 through March 31, 2008.
Verification: NWS preliminary climate reports (CLM or F6).

Scoring: The winning forecast will have the lowest ‘total absolute error’ (TAE).

NCDC period-of-record normal (PORN) snowfall climatology for the Contest stations is available from the ‘Climatology’ link at the web site.

Good Luck to All!

STATION LIST

Caribou, ME – CAR –
Bangor, ME – BGR –
Portland, ME – PWM –
Concord, NH – CON –
Burlington, VT – BTV –
Boston, MA – BOS –
Worcester, MA – ORH –
Providence, RI – PVD –
Bridgeport, CT – BDR –
Bradley / Hartford, CT – BDL –
Albany, NY – ALB –
Binghamton, NY – BGM –
Central Park, NY – NYC –
Allentown, PA – ABE –
Harrisburg / Middletown, PA – MDT –
Philadelphia, PA – PHL –
Atlantic City, NJ – ACY –
Newark, NJ – EWR –
Baltimore, MD – BWI –
Dulles, VA – IAD –
Washington National – DCA –
Salisbury, MD – SBY –
Richmond, VA – RIC –
Norfolk, VA – ORF –
Raleigh-Durham, NC – RDU –

Go to http://www.newx-forecasts.com to check it out and have a great Sunday all, I’m off to rake up some leaves.

I don’t know what it is about this season but for whatever reason I cannot seem to get warm. I think I turned into a sissy man, not that I wasn’t always one but for whatever reason I’m noticing that it’s cold outside this year. In the 46 years that I have lived here I don’t think I have paid much attention to the cold like I am right now. Hopefully it’s just a phase I am going through and it won’t last the whole season.

I’m doing my normal get ready for Winter rituals. Just wear a sweatshirt and not a coat until it really gets cold out ritual. Kind of like trying to build up my tolerance for the really freezing weather. One thing different this year and it could be what’s throwing my body off is that I did stop wearing my sandals earlier than normal. Only for the fact that a leather strap broke on one of them. Maybe that is why I can’t seem to get warm this season 🙁

On the snow front Syracuse moved a bit closer to regaining the lead from Binghamton. Only .8 inches of new snow which surprised me because it seemed like we received close to a couple of inches the last couple of days, at least where I live which is just SE of the airport. Must be that the snow wasn’t falling toward the North. Mike Murphy is saying the same thing about Binghamton. He was expecting the totals to go up because of the snow he was getting where he lives and just a trace was reported. I suppose it comes out to sometimes we benefit from the location of the snow measurements and other times we don’t and this was one of those times. I wouldn’t be surprised though if a correction comes out for the Bingo area only for the fact that one of the times I checked the NOAA stats for them there was a MM which I believe means that the stats weren’t reported at that time when I checked. Something I don’t see to often so hang in there Binghamton, maybe they will make an update. The big question is what is Buffalo waiting for this year? They are at a stand still right now. Have a great weekend all!

I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours. I hope everyone has plenty to be thankful for and that it continues to be that way for you and your family. Why is Thanksgiving celebrated? That’s a good question for one of my favorite sources for information, wikipedia and you can read about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving .

It’s time for the Golden Snowball websites shameless plug. Oh Paleease, I only do about two or three of these a year and the next few days are when some of the biggest sales happen. The chances are that I’ll be sleeping in tomorrow so I figure I’ll throw up some links before I head out to visit with family and friends. Black Friday is tomorrow and what they now call Cyber Monday is on the 26th this shopping season. According to Walmart who I am an affiliate with black friday is indeed their biggest sales day of the year and the next two weeks is their busiest shopping period so if someone tells you different they are wrong.

I have relationships with over 100 merchants online and they send special offers to put on our websites and right now my email box is full with coupons. I figure I’ll add Walmart specials here for our visitors and I’ll update this post as they come in. Enough said and for those of you who shop online, enjoy. One thing to note is that stuff sells faster than you can add it to your shopping cart. Walmart sent me a list of online specials for today only, Thanksgiving and the link is below. Don’t forget the free shipping to store that they have now.

Save Big with Thanksgiving Day Online Specials at Walmart.com

Have a GREAT Thanksgiving Day Everyone!