Snow Storm Padding Buffalo and Rochester’s Snow Totals
Stay Safe All! Rochester and Buffalo are both making a charge to the top of the Golden Snowball snow hill. I don’t think either city will have enough to make Syracuse slide off the top right now but man, they sure will have enough snow to pick another snowball fight with Syracuse in the near future. Then again, who knows because I’m normally wrong 😉
Both Rochester and Buffalo have been getting snow and a lot of it as of last night and today and it’s still snowing in both places. From reading posts and tweets online, believe it or not, it is looking pretty good that Rochester may slide past Buffalo when all of the snowflakes are added up.
Some Snow Totals From Storm So Far
As of yesterday’s update, Rochester was trailing Buffalo by 4.5 inches of snow this season. Both cities were trailing Syracuse by 20 + inches of snow but that is going to change as soon as the next update from the NWS comes out this afternoon.
I believe that Syracuse will have some snow to add by the time this storm is over but Syracuse got the warm side of the storm picking up a lot of rain instead of snow. No doubt the snow contest just got a lot more exciting than it has been this season so far with this latest storm.
Here are some unofficial snow stats so far for Rochester and Buffalo according to a tweet on TJ Pignataro’s twitter, who writes for The Buffalo News – NWS update from last hour: Buffalo (+7.9″) is now at 43.1″ for the season. Rochester (+16.3″) is at 47.0″. It is looking good for Rochester to overtake Buffalo for the second place slot in the snow contest. Better yet though it is looking pretty good that both cities will melt some snow totals off of Syracuse’s lead they have.
Snowiest City in The US Snow Contest
Wait, it gets even better for those of you who also follow the National snow contest for Snowiest Big Cities in the US. Both Rochester and Buffalo should make a pretty good charge up the Golden Snow Globe snow mountain come the next update. As of yesterday, Buffalo was in 10th place and Rochester all the way down in 17th place. I think both cities come tomorrow will be really close at breaking into the Top 5 of the contest for snowiest Big cities in the country.
Stay Safe all and take it slow – See Snow – Drive Slow! Have an awesome day and stay tuned for the afternoon update.
Hi Pat,
I grew up in Syracuse, born in 1953, left for college and then some, but came back to live in 1992. I remember the 1966 snowstorm as a kid and the blizzard of 1993. The past several years have not been Syracuse winters, not even close to average Syracuse winters of the decades past, in terms of first real snowfall, temps, rain, etc. (I live in the Syracuse University area, and while I couldn’t find an up-to-date total snowfall this winter even though I searched for it several different ways online, the total we had was nowhere near 101.3″)
The weather has been rather bizarre, especially in the number of warmer days, the total snow this year and the severe cold at times during this winter and last. Yes, El Nino plays a big part, but the underlying patterns are consistent with human activity-driven Global Warming/Climate Change, and I would love to see an overview in your blog of just how this has driven our weather in Syracuse and Central New York.
Later, or less extensive, freezing of the Great Lakes means more precipitation, which we got mostly in rain. The deep freeze temps were the result of the Jet Stream influence by a rapidly warming Arctic: the Jet Stream is formed by the contrast in temps between the Arctic air mass and the air mass to its south. The stronger the difference in temps, the stronger and straighter around the Jet Stream is; as the temp differential lessens the Jet Stream meanders – it is this meandering that is the ‘polar vortex’ that brings frigid temps to us. (The Arctic air mass on average is warming but that doesn’t mean that it’s not still very cold compared to us.)
Human activity-driven GW and CC are adding enormous amounts of energy – heat – to the oceans, making El Nino stronger, in turn driving effects that reach us here.
The effects of GW and CC are, for the most part, compartmentalized in the media. While there is some coverage of how CC relates to the drought in California, in general it is not in depth, and there is very little coverage, if any, on the tie-in to what we’re seeing in Central NY. I did see our Meterologist Dave Eichorn describe this and how it related to Superstorm Sandy, and do an excellent job, but that was at a showing of the film “Chasing Ice” and not on television.
GW and CC should not be compartmentalized; they need to be incorporated into every analysis of those things which are driven or strongly influenced by them. I’d love to see you include this in your fun and interesting blog and contest.
Thanks!
Sandra Porter
Syracuse