First off we have another tie between Buffalo and Rochester. The second time they have tied this season.
As for the storm, My guess is that the storm heading our way must have shifted a bit because when I checked yesterday Syracuse, Binghamton and Albany were under a Storm Watch. Buffalo and Rochester were left out. The good/bad (depending on how much you like storms) news is that All of the golden snowball cities are now under a snowstorm warning. The storm also looks to be getting a bit bigger which could be another reason that Buffalo and Rochester are now under the snow gun also. The more the merrier and from reading around a good part of New York state is/will be under a storm warning.
The consensus seems to be anywhere from 5 – 12 inches of snow between late tonight and into Wednesday. A snow day for the kids? It’s looking pretty good in my opinion but no hate mail kids if it doesn’t happen. What I’m liking about this storm is that there really isn’t much of a mention of freezing rain for our areas anyways. It should be cold enough to keep it all snow. Unfortunately some of the south western states are getting the freezing rain and ice as shown on the weather channel.
Will Syracuse surpass their average seasonal snow totals by the end of tomorrow? Looking at the Golden Snowball season snow average it’s almost a no brainer that we will. Unfortunately it’s not that easy though after an email I received from Jim Teske from TV 9 a great meteorologist here in the Syracuse area. He sent me a good link with monthly stats that add up to a seasonal average for Syracuse of 121.1 inches of snow which is in the 30 year period that we use. You can view those stats at http://www.erh.noaa.gov/bgm/climate/syr/syr_normals.shtml NOAA Stats and Official. Jim’s right with those stats>
The stats we use are also from NOAA but are different from what Jim pointed out to me. Rather than post the link because it’s a several step process I’ll post what I will pull up come the end of May and these are from May of 2008, last seasons yearly normals.
CLIMATE NORMAL PERIOD 1971 TO 2000
WEATHER OBSERVED NORMAL DEPART LAST YEAR`S
VALUE DATE(S) VALUE FROM VALUE DATE(S)
NORMAL
……………………………………………………….
SNOWFALL (INCHES)
RECORDS
TOTAL 2.1 1996
24 HR TOTAL 2.1 05/12/1996 TO 05/12/1996
SNOW DEPTH 1 05/12/1996
TOTALS 0.0 0.1 -0.1 0.0
SINCE 7/1 109.1 111.9 -2.8 140.2
The 109.1 would have been last years totals for Syracuse and the 111.9 states Normal Value. Perhaps I’m missing something and Normal Value isn’t the same as Average??? Thoughts??? Either way I’ll get to the bottom of this and maybe Jim will chime in and help me see the way. After crunching numbers all morning all I can say is for some reason I have a headache. More to come as I’m clued in more 😉
Tomorrows headlines at Goldensnowball.com will most likely be if we get just a few inches “Syracuse Passes Their Seasonal Totals, I Think” or “Syracuse Plows by Their Seasonal Averages” if we can stack up at least 11.3 inches of snow. Hopefully the second one 😉
Take it slow tomorrow because the chances are really good that the roads will be nasty tomorrow and as always See Snow – Drive Slow.
Anon, the problem is, is that I looked back past the 30 year average into the 60’s and it was still showing Syracuse’s yearly average as 111.9.
When I figured it out from 71 – 2000 the average comes out to 120.1 I think it was 🙁
I’ll blog more about it tomorrow and list a few links.
ZR, did ya bring the winter clothes that I mentioned )p
Duck, that would be cool in my opinion. 200 inches is my goal for this season 😉 Gonna be tough to do though but I don’t think there is any warm up in the near future.
Charles, I was thinking that Rochester and Buffalo would both come in with higher totals than Syracuse has. Keep in mind that your totals are only up until 4:00 PM so they should be going up still. I measured right around 9 inches at my house and as of 10:00 NOAA was showing 7.4 inches of snow for us here.
So far we have had 6.0 inches officially at ROC but I live just outside of the city and have had almost 11 inches.
Is this the year the “unbreakable” 200 inch barrier gets plowed over?
So i am working in College Station Texas (home of Texas A&M) and they are telling everyone to stay home until the cold subsides. (its 35 and raining here!)
Without knowing where you got your numbers from, it’s impossible to say which is correct.
What gets even more interesting is if you take the snowfall totals on the NOAA website and do an average, you get 117.8. So there must be something more involved.
I’d go with whatever NOAA says is the normal… chances are they know what they are talking about. 😛