Congratulations Syracuse!!!  It seems like just yesterday that most people were dreading winter and the snow season and now here we are wrapping up the Golden Snowball Contest as we always do on May 1st.  Now we have a whole month or two of warm weather ahead of us before we start thinking about the snow again 🙂  OK, let’s hope it’s more like 5 – 7 months ahead of us before the word snow is even mentioned.

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 🙂