GoldenSnowball.com - A Fun New York Snow Contest

It’s a Wrap! The 2006 – 2007 Golden Snowball Trophy once again goes to Syracuse. This was by far one of the strangest seasons I can remember since keeping the stats for the contest. Buffalo gets the early jump only to be snowplowed over by Syracuse and Rochester. It will be interesting to see some of the records that were broken this snow season. All in all it was a fun season though with many new people visiting, new forum members and the new blog was fun hearing some of the responses from around CNY and the US. Even and email from a former Syracusan from China along with many other emails. Here’s a quick look back at the season.

Buffalo set some records with the freak snowstorm they had in October which gave them a big jump on the other 4 Golden Snowball cities. A snow pounding of 22.6 inches on October 13th and a lead that lasted for quite sometime. Buffalo actually held the lead for most of the season, about 4 months, starting in October and giving it up for the first time of the season on January 31st to Syracuse.

November was a bust as far as snow goes. Buffalo added a little bit to their lead to go ahead of the rest of us by over 2 feet. Rochester showed something like half an inch while Syracuse, Binghamton and Albany were still only showing a trace of snow for the season. The story of November 2006 was rain and alot of it. By the end of November Binghamton was only a couple days of setting a record. The record for the latest start of a snow season without any measurable snow.

The start of December wasn’t much different. On Decmber 1st Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse broke the rainiest day record for the 1st of December. Buffalo received 1.21 inches, Rock City received 1.29 inches breaking the daily record dating all the way back to 1910. Binghamton set the record for the latest measurable snow in a season on December 2nd. Buffalo continued to add to it’s lead setting a date record of 5.4 inches of snow on December 4th. Syracuse finally covered the grass but less than 2 inches fell. I think this was about the time we started bugging NYCO at Silent-Edge to bring out the Snow God to see if that would help bring some of the white fluffy stuff to the Golden Snowball cities. Right around December 7 – 8 Syracuse made a move and slid by Rochester to take second place over. December 21st something cool took place. A press conference awarding the trophy to Syracuse from the previous year. I gt to meet Dennis Brogan and Sean Kirst for the first time. A quick news conference where Dennis handed me the trophy in which I in turn handed it over to Jeff Brown, the DPW head man in charge of all the people who keeps the roads in tip top shape in Syracuse. It was also the first chance for a lot of people to see what a fool I really am. Pictures of the press conference and Golden Snowball Trophy. The worst thing that happened in December was that we had a White Christmas. Something to me is always missing when the grass is green during the Christmas holidays. To sum December up, It was a Bust also!

Come January the ski resorts and snowmobilers had to be in a depressed state of mind. Not to mention the ice fishers and snow plowers. One of the busiest seasons, Christmas just passed by with no snow to play in and no money to be made. I made my snow city predictions and was way off this season. Only 2 out of 5 right. Not too good for the so called Oracle of the Golden Snowball contest. Remember most of my season predictions were based on more coastal storms than we had. Plus a couple of the Nor’ Easters were in the form of rain which hurt Binghamton’s snow stats on the season.

1st Place – Syracuse
2nd Place – Buffalo
3rd Place – Binghamton
4th Place – Rochester
Dead Last – Albany (my most confident prediction go figure)

January was starting out slow and it was time for drastic measures. Yup, it was time for the Snow Dance to take place out of desperation. On January 7th the snow ritual took place at an undisclosed location and time. The ritual dance is a well sought after event that has never been captured on film although many stake outs have taken place in hopes of capturing the Snowman making a complete idiot of himself. This year I could of sworn that I even saw the National Geographic trucks staking out my house. By now we had tried reverse psychology on Mother Nature, the Snow God was threatened to be locked back up in the closet and a few other things in hopes of bringing snow to the great Golden Snowball cities. Two days after the snow dance was performed the north started receiving snow and Syracuse had their biggest snowfall of the season, over 8 inches. This late in the season things still were looking pretty lame. At the beginning of the snow season some of us were talking over at Sean’s place on the web at http://www.syracuse.com/kirst/ about challenging some of the cities in Canada like Quebec City to see who receives the most snow in the 2006 – 2007 season. Quebec City is one of the snowiest cities in the world with a population over 100,000 along with Syracuse. After the way things were going into January the talk kind of slowed down. Eric who emails me some great info from time to time mentioned that when he took his daughter back to college on Jan 18th Syracuse was only right around 12 inches on the season. Definitely not looking like the larger city snow leader of the United States and not even close to looking like a world leader.

Still in the month of January and finally the snow season has begun. From Jan 9th off and on the snow totals were starting to add up for a few of the cities and Syracuse was finally making a run at Buffalo. Also some cool stats came out at http://reinventcny.tripod.com/ by Chris a stats lover that gave us a great break down of cities who receive the most snowfall by population. For the middle of January Syracuse made several attempts to take over the king of snow hills from Buffalo only to be pushed down the hill several times. No way was Buffalo willing to give up the top of the hill.

Two of my favorite posts of the season were started up by Steve Madsen a Buffalo snow lover and big Sabres fan. He sent some pictures to me and they were great. Steve goes by the alias of The General and the postings are at http://goldensnowball.com/2007/01/man-wanted-in-connection-with-snow-coup.html and at http://goldensnowball.com/2007/01/shhh-syracuse-is-only-1-inch-away_30.html . Buffalo might be our arch enemy when it comes to the snow contest but they are a great bunch of fun people and made this season a lot of fun. Steve also comes up with some great stats on the Golden Snowball cities. Thanks Steve for all the help again this season. WOW, this is getting long! Finally on the last day of January Syracuse charges the hill to push Buffalo from the top and slides into the lead. For the first time this season Buffalo is no longer the leader.

Finally February and all hell was breaking out. Most of us were so far from our normal yearly snowfall stats still that most people didn’t think any of the cities with the exception of Buffalo would hit our normals. Well February changed that. Phil the groundhog didn’t see his shadow and predicted an early Spring. The Oracle of the contest put on a few pounds this winter and couldn’t miss his shadow, even in the dark. I didn’t bye groundhog Phil’s predictions this year. We were way too far behind the normal totals and this is CNY – Upstate New York and for those of us who have lived here all our lives know that sooner or later everything evens out, meaning more snow was to come in the next couple of months. Buffalo slipped back into the lead at the beginning of February and the North country was about to get pounded and pounded and pounded by snow. Something like 10 days in a row of heavy snowfall for the normal snowbelt cities like Fulton, Oswego, Tug Hill to name a few. So much snow that all of the national media began to cover it. So much snow that I actually turned into a sissy man and said “Nah, keep it up to the North”. 8 – 10 feet is a bit more than I want to shovel in that short of a time.

Wow, this is a long final season wrap up and will be continued tomorrow. I’m off to a double header softball game between Herkimer and OCC College.

End of Part 1 🙂