Anyways, right now I’m getting hammered by them so I’m going to cut off comments for awhile.  I’m talking about 2000 a day right now and growing.  Isn’t worth trying to block the IP’s because they are always different.

If you do need to get a hold of me for any reason feel free to by using the contact form.  Sorry about any inconvenience and have a fun, sunny summer all

Last seasons champs Rochester stayed in reach of Syracuse for most of the season but Syracuse was able to get some late season snowfall including 12 inches in April to pull away at the end.  As for how far off the Golden Snowball cities were from their normal averages I would have to say that this was once again a pretty lame season.  Not as bad as last seasons lack of snowfall but when Albany is the city who came closest to their average snow totals you no it was a below average season.

Below are some stats showing the difference between this seasons snowfall and the normal average for all of the GSB cities.  That is providing it doesn’t snow any more   Buffalo’s snow the last couple of seasons definitely has me scratching my head.  36.7 inches last season and only 58.8 inches this season to date

Albany - 7.7 inches below normal snow totals.
Syracuse – 8.4 below
Binghamton – 14.3 below
Rochester – 21.4 below
Buffalo – 35.9 below

Last but not least to wrap this season up a quick Thanks to Stephen Ellis who helps out at both goldensnowball.com and the national snow site goldensnowglobe.com.  This season Stephen came up with an idea that he borrowed (Stole, shhh) from the weather channel called Fantasy Snowfall.  We gave it a test run this season and hopefully next season we can bring in some more people to make it more fun.  Stephen kicked my butt most likely, always making a big comeback at the end of each month

Thanks to all of you who visit the site and also to all of you who posted comments through the season to make it an even more fun contest to pass the winter by.  This season the Golden Snowball website had well over 100,000 visits.  As always, visits from both snow lovers and snow haters   A big thanks to those of you who were able to donate to the site to help offset some of the out of pocket expenses running the site.  It really does help out a lot :)

A Big Thanks to the journalists from some of the Golden Snowball cities who always have some fun with the contest throughout the season. One that comes to mind is Sean Kirst from the Post standard and Syracuse.com who has always written some informative and fun articles about the GSB snow contest.  The main reason our fun snow contest has grown big enough to get some national media exposure.

I’m sure our great Mayor of Syracuse, Stephanie Miner will be more than happy to hear that Syracuse has won once again   Hey with the lack of snow this season all of the Mayor’s I’m sure are happy for the money they must have saved on their DPW budgets

Congrats again to Syracuse and don’t forget that the National Snow Contest still lives on for a little longer.  I’m hoping to call the Golden Snow Globe Contest in a couple of weeks if the snow has finally stopped falling in most of the states.

Have a Super Awesome Summer Everyone

Syracuse added quite a few snowflakes to their lead over 2nd place Rochester and also set a date record for Tuesday, 4/2/13.  Syracuse picked up 10.5 inches of snow yesterday breaking the old date record of 1.4 inches back in 1991.  Syracuse also has a shot at breaking their all time snow total record for the month of April which is 16.4 inches back in 1983 if it continues for a day or two.  I think if they don’t break it by tonight I’m just about ready to say no problem, let’s move onto Spring.

Sean Kirst, journalist for the Post Standard and Syracuse.com put out a good article about this last late season snowfall in Syracuse and also how it helped them overtake Worcester, MA and Erie, PA in the national snow contest.  Check out Sean’s article at here at Syracuse.com.

For some reason I’m starting be one of the most hated person on my facebook page.  I’m talking my page that is all family and friends.  Every time it snow I get posts like cut the crap Pat, enough already Pat, You better not do another snow dance, and a bunch of other posts on my facebook page and this is family also.  It’s like my snow dances really have an effect on the weather   OK, they really do and I did do one that ticked a bunch of people off but now that Syracuse has the lead in both the Golden Snowball Contest and the National Golden Snow Globe Contest I can finally do a Spring dance.  Who knows, maybe I’ll do a spring ballet dance just to prove that I really am a team player.  Nah, that isn’t happening

My neighbor across the street even called and said enough.  She mentioned that I was or the snow was going to kill all of her flowers that just started to spring up.  I told her just let us get ahead of Worcester, Mass and that will be the end of me wishing for more snow.  Plus I told her that her flowers will be fine, that they are New Yorkers and they can handle it.  We all made it through another winter/spring in New York and I suppose even I have to say that it’s time to move on to our Spring season.  What’s left of it anyways

Have a SUPER SNOWLESS Week Everyone

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OK, nothing like a nice spring shower, of snow that is.  OK, maybe more like some Spring lake effect snow to put Syracuse over the 100 inch mark.  All Syracuse needs now and most likely that fell during the overnight is another inch give or take to double last seasons wimpy snowfall totals.  It’s hard to believe that they still may hit their seasonal average of 123 inches.

I got woken up this morning from Steve in Rochester who was curious as to what Rochester’s snow totals were as of today.  Thanks for the wake up call Steve   I’m joking, it was time to get up and get to work anyways.  I guess he has a dinner bet going with a friend based on what the snow totals for Rochester end up being today.  Unless The Rock got 4.5 inches overnight it looks like his wallet will be a little lighter come the end of the night   Good Luck!

I think I finally figured a way to make a few bucks off our snow site.  Come the end of the season, whenever that may be I offer a choice.  If you want it to keep snowing then donate 5 bucks to the site and I’ll do another snow dance.  If you’re sick of the snow by now donate 10.00 and I won’t do another snow dance   You all know how effective my dances are   Actually this is a little to close to almost blackmailing ya’s so maybe I better scratch that plan.

I haven’t posted much this season about Syracuse but trust me I’m still a die hard football and basketball fan of Da’Cuse.  They play tonight against Cal and need to win to move on to the next round so Good Luck Orange!!!  How are all of your brackets doing.  So far one out of my two are in the trash already and the second one is barely hanging in there

Have a GREAT Weekend Everyone!!!

Sorry about the lack of updates the last week but my new love of my life was in town visiting from South/North Carolina At the beginning of the snow season I became a Grandpa and when the little one comes to town everything else moves to the back. Unfortunately they went back after a fun weeks visit including the parade last weekend. One good thing is that out of the 3 visits my little buddy made here to Syracuse he got to see snow every time and 2 of the times we had storms. He may have been born in South Carolina but he’ll always have Syracuse in him

OK, on to snow but the problem is there really hasn’t been a whole lot of snow falling in the Golden Snowball cities this past week.  Looking at the snow stats I noticed that Syracuse and Albany at this time last season had all the snow they would get.  In other words last season neither Syracuse or Albany received anymore snow from here on other than maybe a trace.  The other 3 cities are pretty close to their totals last season.

So does that mean it’s done snowing in the GSB cities.  Ha, not a chance in my opinion but no doubt the time is running out fast so last years snow champion Rochester better do a snow dance fast to hang on to the bragging rights   Has everyone had enough already or do you want it to keep coming?

Have an Awesome Weekend Everyone!

I think there is enough time and it seems like March is a good month for some decent storms.  There is one brewing to the west right now but from what I have been reading it is expected to stay more to the south of us when it comes through.  I’m hoping that maybe the jet stream will move up to the north a bit and maybe tighten up the snow contest as we come closer to the end of the snow season.  Let’s go GSB cities!  Do a snow dance or something to get the contest closer   Can the defending snow champions Rochester pull off a late season victory.  Still enough time left for them to do it.

I’m going to try and get a full update in on the National Snow Contest over at www.goldensnowglobe.com .  That snow race is still pretty close between Syracuse, Erie, Pa and Worcester, Mass.  As of the last update Syracuse was holding on to lead but only by inches.  Erie may be able to cash in on the storm coming through.  It should be/get interesting

Have a GREAT Week All

OK, barring any fuzzy math on my part here are the entries that were pretty close to each other along with the winner of the contest.  Thanks to all of you who entered

Stephen – 261.7 off by - 18.5
Kimberly – 299 off by -   18.8
Peter – 258.4  off by -     21.8

The winner and not by much is
* Don who had 297.5 and missed by 17.3 inches of snow.

END OF FUBRUARY TOTALS

Syracuse – 83.2
Rochester – 63.8
Binghamton – 53.8
Buffalo – 48.7
Albany – 30.7

Total = 280.2

The snow totals above is what NOAA, The National Weather Service has reported as of the end of yesterday.  So the magic number to hit or be closest to after adding the totals of the 5 Golden Snowball cities comes out to 280.2 inches of 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

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…

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