I posted last night (see below) about some kind of weather phenomenon going on while I was out and about. Well after reading around and reading some comments left here by visitors it turns out that what I was seeing are called Light Pillars. It really was an awesome site and there are a few pictures on a couple of sites to show you what I mean. I took several pictures and as usual my night time pictures didn’t come out. One of these days I will read the manual to my new camera. In the mean time check out the pictures at http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=247dfa80-5266-43ad-b5d7-2d3f5d1c8fdf and you will see how cool it looked. There is also a picture on Syracuse.com at http://blog.syracuse.com/news/2008/02/pillars_of_light_illuminate_sk.html I’ll tell you one thing those photographers for the Post Standard have taken some great pictures over the years and being a photo buff I really love checking them out.
According to Sully light pillars are city lights reflecting ice crystals from up above. Usually these are flat crystals that are able to focus the light in pillar shape. They are most common on very cold mornings when there’s moisture present trapped under inversions. Usually it’s only cold enough for super cooled ice droplets, but when there’s ice nuclei present to form a snowflakes, Viola! Thanks Sully 😉 Here is another picture I found and is pretty close to what I was seeing when driving home from Fayetteville last night;
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0209/pillars_tape_big.jpg You can read more about Light Pillars at http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/eyes/pillars.htm
TQ who is a forum member here at Golden Snowball has a contest going on right now which he does every time there is some snow in the forecast for the eastern coast cities. I ALWAYS keep intending to post them here when he has them and once again I missed it. For what ever reason I was thinking the deadline was for later tonight. Anyways here is the link to his site for you all to bookmark for any future contests that he has http://www.newx-forecasts.com Once again I’m sorry for missing the deadline TQ and just leave the info in the comments box nest time to be safe 😉
Weather wise it looks like snow is in the forecast for most if not all of the GSB cities but not a whole lot of it from what I have read. I’m not even going to try and predict how much because I along with a few others have been off quite a bit this year. Maybe if I say not much we will get a ton of snow. SO, not much snow coming our way but check with the pros (not us) to see whats coming our way.
I just check out the snow stats for Madison, Wisconsin and it looks like Syracuse is holding on to a narrow lead with Madison picking up another 1.5 inches of snow to stand at 89.3 for the season. Syracuse is at 94.4 so only about 5 inches separating the two cities. Right now Madison is a whopping 50 inches over their normal snowfall for this time of the year. Does anyone know of any other cities in the United States with a population over 100,000 that is close to Syracuse or above them? Have a Super Weekend All!
John,
I posted above to feel free to use anything you would like to on the site.
Cheers,
Patrick
Hello there,
I have a question for the webmaster/admin here at http://www.9wsyr.com.
Can I use some of the information from your blog post right above if I give a backlink back to this site?
Thanks,
John
James,
9wsyr.com can use anything on the website you wish to. No need to ask in the future 😉
Cheers,
Patrick
Greetings,
This is a inquiry for the webmaster/admin here at http://www.9wsyr.com.
May I use part of the information from this blog post above if I give a link back to your website?
Thanks,
James
I want to thank the blogger very much not only for this post but also for his all previous efforts. I found goldensnowball.com to be very interesting. I will be coming back to goldensnowball.com for more information.
The reason Cleveland, OH’s snowfall totals are so low is due to the airport location. Cleveland’s airport is not in the Snow Belt. Same can be said about Buffalo. If Buffalo’s airport was located in Hamburg or West Seneca, Syracuse would have real competition with Buffalo each year.
Grand Rapids, Mich., is at 97.8 inches for the season. Always a tough competitor, with lake-effect skills of its own.
patrick, you see how the heavy snow just kinda sits over Bingo on the radar…well that is either due to my new invetion: a giant snow magnet…or more likely due to significant upslope enhancement on a SE wind. areas SW of binghamton are being down sloped(which dries the air out). id suspect Albany does decent…they may be downsloped off the catskills, or they maybe upsloped offthe bershires…its hard to tell how it will playout, id guess they get less snow than BIngo due to being at a lower elevation, but i may be wrong, depending on how much atlantic moisture can get into Albany. also on a side not i bet bgm airport ends up with under an inch..did u see how strong the winds were, i bet almost all the snow blew off their snowboard..so i guess it wont count 😉
Anon, thanks for the suggestion and I just checked Cleveland, OH out. Right now they are at 46.8 inches which kind of surprised me. It seems like a lot of times when I’ve checked the radars this season they were getting snow. I would have figured them for having more than that.
Mike, looking at the radar it seems like the snow is light to the SW of Bingo but when it gets to you it intensifies. Hopefully it will last to give you at least 6 inches. The airport too, lmao. One thing though it looks like Albany is on your snows path so it will be interesting to see what they do tonight. I haven’t been out tonight but a guess would be maybe a couple of inches in the Cuse area.
patrick, its pounding down here. we have 4 inches so far, id expect 6 before were done.
Cleveland, OH is a good size city which also gets alot of snow. Don’t know if its in the same snowfall league as upstate NY but it may be worth a look.
Mike, I think your order for this clipper may be right. Here are my picks for the most snow without any totals.
Bingo
Albany
Buffalo
Rochester
Syracuse
That said it looks like a just miss for Syracuse and Binghamton for a decent amt of snowfall
No I don’t see it at all 😉 OK, I never did catch that one and most likely it has been pointed out in the past but I couldn’t find it but it’s fixed and thanks for pointing it out.
Most likely there are many more mistakes to be found but we do appreciate when they are pointed out to us. I can barely speak English yet alone type it.
Now onto years, year’s. Examples work fine here 😉
Did anyone else ever notice that cities is missed spelled at the top of the page? It’s spelled in the possessive tense(city’s), rather than the multiple tense(cities). I think I noticed that during that years too. I mean year’s.