As usual with the contest, Buffalo has racked up the first measurable snow of the young season, 2.5 inches to be exact. It’s a start, but not as comfy as that 22 inch lead we had last year.

The higher elevations south of Buffalo saw a good 5-10 inches of heavy wet snow. A few lightly scattered power outages from the snow and gusty winds. A few waterspouts seen over Lake Erie, and the rumble of thunder being heard now and then throughout the day.

Haven’t heard any reports from the tug hill area wondering if they got only rain, or if the snowfall just didn’t add up to anything.

The first burst of snow/hail was probably the most interesting of the whole storm. Dead quiet, no wind and the thunder begins to do that deep shallow rumble for a minute or two. Then the winds suddenly pick up and start howling, followed by a whiteout of snow and hail that lasts for about 15 minutes.

We will have to wait and see how long Buffalo can hold off the coming onslaught of snow we all know Syracuse will soon start to bring to the stat board.

Well I do enjoy tooting my horn as the NE.Wx snowfall guesstimator Rookie Of The Year last year and for (well in my opinion), “nailing” two of the five GSB cities I made predictions for last season. As the snow looks to start flying this week, I’ll issue my totally unreliable and more then likely way off predictions for this season.

Here are my predictions vs actual for last year. Use your own judgement as to take stock in my predictions or to know better then trusting me.

Albany – 70 – 45.9 – (+34.4%)
Bingo – 95 – 78.6 – (+17.3%)
Buffalo – 120 – 88.9 – (+25.9%)
Rochester – 105 – 107.2 – (-2.1%)
Syracuse – 140 – 140.2 – (-0.1%)

Let’s see here…. My 07-08 GBS Predictions:
Albany – 65
Bingo – 85
Buffalo – 105
Rochester – 95
Syracuse – 125

Yes I hate to give Syracuse the win AGAIN, but it’s hard to bet against Syracuse losing this contest.

NOW!!! Onto some good news (well good news for some of us), the lake effect machine looks to get going for the first time this season. While it looks like mainly a rain/thunderstorm event right now, wet flakes will be flying for Buffalo, and Rochester and could drop a trace to a few tenths, meanwhile Syracuse has the chance to maybe see a an inch as the bands do their dance to the south and the air gets a bit cooler. The higher elevations south of Buffalo, and the Tug Hill, stand the best chance for some snow this week, with 3-6inches likely, and maybe a few isolated 6inch+ reports. Of course who really knows what will happen, I remember hearing a forecast just like this last year for a rain event, and the next day we had two feet of snow, SO…..

Hopefully everyone is ready to officially start another season, and is ready to deal with what mother nature has to offer. I’ll extend an invitation to any lurkers on the main page to stop by the forum boards here and join the rest of us in more detailed conversation about the happenings weather wise across upstate New York.

The General…
aka smadsen8486 (from the forum)
aka Steve from Buffalo [West Seneca].

LET IT SNOW….

Repeat Transmission…
LET IT SNOW….

..end test transmission..

Depressing or what??? It’s time to set the clocks back an hour tonight and for some reason it depresses me because I know whats coming our way soon. Most likely it will be getting darker an hour earlier too. Hey, you heard that first here! No one else is dumb enough to make that comment 🙂 Don’t forget to change your batteries in your smoke and fire alarms like the fire dept. recommends because it’s easy to remember each year by doing it when you set the clocks back.

I still need to get all the stats in the chart at the top in order which will be done in the next few days. I’ll also be adding the new poll questions soon. Last season’s questions were who would win the GSB contest and should the Syracuse Winterfest be named the Golden Snowball Festival. For some unknown reason Syracuse cleaned up in the first poll question winning 76% of the votes. The poll is of course unscientific but it will be interesting to see what the results will be this season. I’m not putting my money on DaCuse this winter.

As for the winterfest question, that was a close one with the yeses barely winning by 33 votes. Maybe we will have to ask Mrs Mahoney and Mr Magnarelli which way they would vote before we cast a vote for them come this Tuesdays election. It would be interesting just to hear what they have to say yet alone find out if they even heard of the contest. JMO of course! Last years poll results can be seen at http://www.goldensnowball.com/2006-2007-poll.htm If anyone has any suggestions as to what to poll this season just reply to this post and it will be considered.

Look for a couple of changes this season at the website. One of them is that We may be having another person help out with the daily blogging duties and the chances are it will be The General who is well know here at Goldensnowball.com and is from the Buffalo area. People have been begging for me to let someone else blog because of how boring I am so I finally gave in. The General, rel name Steve will liven things up with his normal forecasts that are way off, fun snowman pictures decapitating Syracuse snowmen heads and more 🙂 Ok in reality I have been thinking about doing this the last year or so and finally figured out a way to do it and it should be a lot of fun getting another cities perspective on the contest. Who knows, maybe it will bring Buffalo a little luck too. Ok, Enough said and have a great end of the weekend all!

I thought I said I would write about the 2006 – 2007 snow season part 2 wrap up the next day. Come on, I only missed by a Season (summer) Umm, Where did I leave off???

Around March 5th and 6th Syracuse finally hit their average yearly snow totals which after the way the season started might of surprised some people that they would even hit by the end of the season. Rochester also hit their average on March 19th just a few days before Spring. We got a mix of everything in March including some long awaited warmer days. Of course St. Patty’s day was a typical cold and windy day.

I think the big news was that Syracuse’s basketball team got ^&%%*$% by the NCAA committee but that was then and I’m over it now. NOT!!! Other than that it was pretty much a typical month of March in good Ole CNY.

April brought a mix of everything also including snow on the ground for Easter if my memory serves me right. Eric sent in a good picture from Easter at

http://goldensnowball.com/uploaded_images/erics-easter-snowman-(2)-710820.jpg

I thought Buffalo and Binghamton might of been able to at least pull off their averages but both just missed unless NOAA updated last seasons stats. I’ll check on that tomorrow. Sure I will 🙂 As for Albany??? Enough said! About a half a foot of snow fell on some of the Golden Snowball cities between the 15th and 16th of April and by this time even the Oracle was ready to say uncle. Enough was enough already. Pretty much after that things started to go uphill weather wise and my posts started to slack off which mean only one thing. Warm weather was ahead and that it was.

I hope everyone had a super summer and with the decent mix of weather most likely you did. I personally like the 70 degree temperatures and this summer there was something for everyone including mild temperatures and the hot temperatures. Most of the weekends were perfect and rain free. I think I just heard that this October is one of the warmest on record. It will be interesting to see how the 2007 – 2008 snow season turns out. With that said I’ll be updating the site and stats in preparation for the new season in the coming days!