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All posts for the month February, 2013

Your input needed – I’m curious if the same conversations go on about snow in your cities that go on here in the Syracuse area.  Mainly Buffalo, Syracuse and Rochester.  The argument every year is that is it good to brag about all of the snow we all get or to just keep quiet about it and hope that people don’t see the 4 – 5 foot snowbanks at times when they visit the area.  Is this the same conversation in your city about the snowfall you get?  Don’t brag about our snow.

Feel free to chime in here or at Sean Kirst’s place on the web. Sean, who is a great journalist for the Post Standard and Syracuse.com had a good article in the paper the other day.  It’s about a gentleman from the Syracuse area, Russ Andrews who has been saying that he doen’t think it’s smart bragging or promoting our cities as being one of the snowiest bigger cities in the country on average and even in all of North America.  Russ feels it hurts the city having that kind of reputation.  Keep in mind that Russ Andrews is just making a fun spirited argument and shouldn’t be seen as a bad guy 😉  You can read the article at http://www.syracuse.com/kirst/index.ssf/2013/02/amid_winterfest_russ_andrews_a.html

Sean and I have seen eye to eye on this since we first met and we both believe we should be promoting the Hell out of the snow our cities get.  Let me also add that Sean is the main reason that the Golden Snowball contest was revived to what it is today with his articles, conversations about the snow and so on.

Sean, like myself vision drawing people to the area because of the amount of snow we normally receive each winter season.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, It snows here in Syracuse, Buffalo and Rochester and no matter how hard some of the people in Syracuse want to hide it by shoveling it under the curbs it’s not going to work.

What needs to be done in my opinion is to bring the snow lovers from out of town into town because of the high amounts of snow we receive.  Open up some of our state owned land in the area for snowmobilers, find a place where skiers can ski in the area besides the nearby ski slopes that we already have.  Open up the state fair grounds for the snowmobilers and try to bring in the top sledders around the country for either races or the extreme sports shows.  Make Syracuse, Buffalo and Rochester a stop on their tour every year.  Open the roadways (some of them)  for a weekend and let the sledders use them.  I miss the days when all you heard during a good storm were sleds cruising up and down the streets.

There is so much country side land around all of the Golden Snowball cities that it wouldn’t be hard to promote cross country skiing.  Look at all of the lakes around central and upstate New York that would be perfect to draw in people to take advantage of the frozen lakes for ice fishing.  Have a couple fishing tournaments to draw out of towners to visit our areas.  Fill the hotels with fun filled winter sporting events.  Come up with something fun and different each weekend for the snow lovers to draw them to the area.  Open up some of the bigger hills for the kids to go sledding on.

I was reading a few years back about how well Quebec City does with their annual winter carnival they have.  I think the last I looked they were drawing almost a million people to their area each year including a lot of out of towners including snow enthusiast’s from the United States.  No doubt it’s a big investment, I think it was over a million dollars spent on the event but they are bringing in millions of dollars to their local businesses on that investment.  Sure it would take a few years to get it going as good as Quebec city does with their winter carnival but in the long run if done right it would be well worth it.

Do people from other states really like snow though.  I just looked at my visitor stats from the National Snow contest to see how many visitors were coming to the site.  In the last 30 days goldensnowglobe.com had over 40,000 visitors from pretty much every state in the country.  So I would have to say that yes, people from all over like snow.  Build and they will come 😉

Have an awesome weekend all and make sure you check out Sean’s latest article at http://www.syracuse.com/kirst/index.ssf/2013/02/amid_winterfest_russ_andrews_a.html and don’t be too hard on Russ 😉

Quite the title there huh but it will all make sense in after you read more, maybe 🙂  I’ve been doing some painting at my house because it is up for sale now.  You know how it goes when you paint you have to move stuff all over the place and you’re squeezing through the stuff.

Well that led up to stubbing my toe 🙁  Instead of the normal cuss words that normally come out when I stub my toe I decided as I was bouncing around on one foot that I would continue it and turn it into the first snow dance of the season 🙂  So the snow dance has taken place and lets see what happens in the next several days.

I’ve been meaning to list the house for sale here on the Golden Snowball site for awhile now and figure while all is quiet this is a good time.  So if anyone is looking to move or looking for a house in the East Syracuse Minoa district (Fremont, New York) you can check out the info below to see if you’re interested.  It’s a nice home in a nice neighborhood and in a great school district.

ABOUT THE HOUSE –

* 3 bedrooms
* Kitchen
* Living Room
* Dining Room (could be used as as office or another bedroom)
* 1 Large Bathroom – It’s a big bathroom that has the laundry on the first floor w/ whirlpool tub.
* Basement is unfinished, clean, dry and would be easy to finish off.
* One Car Garage with lot’s of storage space.
* House is on a 1/4 of an acre corner lot.

Asking Price is $119,000

For more information or to set up an appointment for a showing Call Anne Hesse at 315-701-6913

Have an Awesome Day All…

Updated 2/10

First Off, Thanks Jim M. for the donation to the site.  Everyone of them help out a lot 🙂

OK, Here are the latest snow stats for the Golden Snowball cities for the last 2 days.  Keep in mind that I have fuzzy math so…:)  Actually I have the real estate agent coming over to do an open house so I had to put the stats together fast.  I’ll double check them later after the SU game.  GO ORANGE!!!  Did any of you catch the Notre Dame – Louisville game last night?  Awesome game with Notre Dame coming from behind to pull off a win after 5 OT’s.

Rochester – 13.1
Syracuse – 8.6
Buffalo – 8.4
Binghamton 6.9
Albany – 4.8

Right now it’s looking pretty good for Rochester but like I mentioned the overnight snow still has to be added.  I measured 9.5 inches at my house which is just a few miles east of the city and just a few more miles from the airport.  If I were a betting man, Oh yeah I am 😉 I would put my money on Rochester.

I think the biggest disappointment was Albany.  I had them winning this snow round and it looks like they are going to come in last place.  Shows how much I know and why you should look to your local weather for the real forecast 🙂  I’ll get try and get another update in a little later when some more snow stats come out.

Have an Awesome Weekend Everyone 🙂

UPDATED – 2/9 .. 2:00 AM

I’m not sure where Rochester is getting their snow from but they piled on 6.8 inches of new snow so far today.  Enough to bump them up to the number 2 slot.  I’ll try and get updates in as the National Weather Service reports them.  Here is what we have so far as of around 2 AM 2/9

Rochester – 6.9 – ??? – Not reporting as of 2:05 am
Buffalo – 3.3 -??? – Not reporting as of 2:05 am
Syracuse – 6.2
Binghamton 6.0
Albany – 4.8
I still think it’s advantage Albany but we will have to wait and see how the wind blows.  Here in the Syracuse area I’m guessing about 4 inches so far.  Look for an update later and have a safe night.

Feel free to leave a comment here as to how the snow is falling in your neck of the woods during snow storm Nemo.  We love to get updates during the storms.
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I’ve been watching a lot of forecasts today and reading quite a bit on snow storm Nemo.  To be honest I still don’t have a clue with all of the changes that the experts keep making with this storm.  It is understandable though for the fact that a shift this way or that way and everything changes.  Not to mention what the temperatures will be when it hits different cities.

The numbers went down again for some of us with the newest totals for Syracuse anywhere from 4 – 8 inches to 8 – 12 inches.  At one point in the day I was seeing 12 – 18 inches.  I’m sure it’s been the same for the rest of the cities.  From what I see it looks like Albany may be able to pile on some decent snow totals and other cities to the east should also.

As far as the National snow contest goes it looks like some cities in Massachusetts may be the big winners in that snow race.  I’m wondering if Worcester, Mass can pick up enough to take the lead.  Stay tuned and I’ll be posting the snow totals as soon as the National Weather service updates them during and after snow storm Nemo.

Hopefully some of you can grab a 3 day weekend out of this.  Stay safe and drive carefully.  See Snow – Drive Slow 😉

It looks like Binghamton didn’t like being toward the bottom of the snow hill next to Albany and who can blame them.  Binghamton slipped past both Rochester and Buffalo to move into the second place slot.  Now we need one or more of the Golden Snowball cities to make a run at Syracuse to keep this seasons snow race close.

Syracuse picked up a little more snowfall to move them past the 60 inch mark on the season.  Buffalo and Rochester are snowing neck and neck being in a dead tie right now at 36.9 inches each.  Then there is Albany.  Ummm, enough said about Albany for the time being 🙂

The last I looked snow is suppose to be falling Wednesday in the North East so lets see if one of the cities can gain on Da’Cuse before we warm up again.

I’m going to try and get a top 10 update in today for the national snow contest over at www.goldensnowglobe.com .  It’s been a close contest all season and as of the last update Erie, Pa was leading and probably still is.

Have a Great Day Everyone 😉