I figured since all the city’s are showing some snow for the day and night so far I would do a quick update on the stats. When I say all, YES even Albany which finally made it over the inch mark picking up 1 inch so far for the day.

Buffalo and Rochester are reporting 2.1 inches but the stats are only up until around 5pm. Syracuse is showing 3 inches up until around 9pm and Binghamton as of 9pm is reporting 1.8 inches of new fresh snow. Tomorrow’s stats could be really interesting with a possibility that when all the snow totals are added up we could have, do I dare to dream? We could have a new leader in the Great Golden Snowball contest. It all comes down to which way the wind blows and right now looking at the radar it’s still blowing northwest setting Syracuse in the path of another lake effect band that started up north and drifted down south. According to WeatherT in the forum, that could be the norm for the rest of the night.

On the other hand Buffalo is suppose to start picking up some snow later on around 3am and if that happens they could fend off Syracuse’s forecasted, premeditated, pre-planned attack. They were warned all day what could be coming and hopefully they took down their snow shield which has been protecting their city from the snow since the freak storm in October. Yeah, I know. I really need to start getting a life. Hey, Have a great night all!

Syracuse continues to make a move on Buffalo’s first place status in this seasons Golden Snowball race. The lead has narrowed to 8.2 inches. On another note Rochester has started to make their move also, winning this last snow bout and finally making it over the 1 foot mark. A milestone that on a normal season would have been hit a long time ago. This weekend could be interesting and the current standing could change like the wind does.

Most of us are under a lake effect snow watch so keep an eye on the weather if your traveling. A chance of some snow late tonight but the pros are thinking some of the heavier snow could hit some of us starting late Friday thru late Saturday so check your favorite weather station to see what’s going on.

Go Syracuse and I’m not talking weather. What a game last night even if they did blow a 19 point lead that they held at one point. They played one of the best first half’s I have seen them play in a while. Unfortunately Cincy chipped away at it kind of like we are doing to Buffalo’s lead in the snow race. We still romped them, errr beat em up, ummm, ok we barely won by a point with great defense on the last play of the game but it was a win and I like the way the team is playing team ball. Devo is giving the ball up great this year and will probably more than double his assists from last season which is making a huge difference, Watkins has stepped up and looks confident under the basket, Nichols is having an awesome season, Terrence has come off his injury with no problems, Rautins is starting to drop them in the bucket and the list of positives goes on for all of the players. Harris is starting to find his spot on the team. So what if we blew a big lead! We always do and I’m use to it by now. Just think how boring the games would be if we blew out the competition every game. Our guys do it on purpose because they don’t want us getting bored. What a thoughtful bunch of players we have when you come to think about it. That said I’m really liking this team and I think they will get even better as the season goes on. Check out the players stats at http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/roster?collegeId=183 Have a great day all!

While visiting Sean Kirst’s forum at syracuse.com/kirst and chatting about the Golden Snowball contest a post showed up from one of the members there, creditsuisse. He offered up the best stats I have ever seen to all of us that cover tons of the city’s in the US and even Canada. Chris is his real name and he lives in the North Syracuse area. It is by far the most complete list I have come across while researching city snowfall amounts and even Chris admits that it could be flawed a little which is completely understandable for the fact that if you try and research certain data online, a lot of the time you will get conflicting reports. That said if you see something that might be off then just drop us an email or leave a message on the blog here at GSB and we will pass the information on to Chris who will update his stats.

Chris’s web page is at http://reinventcny.tripod.com/ and if your a snow stats freak like myself and many others, get ready to awed. I know I was and I can’t imagine the hours, days and weeks that probably went into researching all that data. Chris said that with his rankings “incorporated cities” is the criteria for getting on his snow totals list. He has the cities broken down as follows;

* Snowiest US Cities over 1,000 in population
* Snowiest US Cities over 10,000 in population
* Snowiest US Micropolitan and Metropolitan Areas
* Top 10 Snowiest US Metropolitan Areas
* Top 5 Snowiest US Cities over 100,000 in population
* Top 5 Snowiest US Metropolitan Areas over 1 Million
* Canada and the US

An example of one of the lists Chris has put together is below and check out his website at http://reinventcny.tripod.com/ for all the US city snowfall totals.

Snowiest US Cities over 1,000 in population

1) 350.0 Truckee, CA 15,000
2) 328.0 Valdez AK 4,000
3) 250.0 Munising, MI 2,000
4) 179.8 Marquette, MI (airport) 173.3 Marquette, MI (city) 19,000
5) 177.0 Gladstone, MI 5,000
6) 177.0 Iron River, MI 2,000
7) 173.3 Steamboat Springs, CO 9,000
8) 153.3 Oswego, NY 18,000
9) 153.0 Rome, NY 35,000
10) 149.6 Gaylord, MI 3,000
11) 141.0 Ishpeming,MI 6,000
12) 141.0 Negaunee, MI 4,000
13) 140.0 Fulton, NY 11,000
14) 135.0 Crystal Falls, MI 1,000
15) 133.1 Manistique, MI 3,000
16) 131.7 Escanaba, MI 13,000
17) 131.2 Sault Ste. Marie, MI 16,000
18) 128.6 Caspian, MI 1,000
19) 125.0 Traverse City, MI 14,000
20) 125.4 Iron Mountain, MI 8,000
21) 125.0 Kingsford , MI 5,000
22) 125.0 Norway, MI 2,000
23) 122.0 Haines, AK 2,000
24) 120.0 Boyne City, MI 3,000
25) 118.0 Cordova, AK 2,000
26) 117.0 Charlevoix, MI 3,000
27) 115.0 Caribou, ME 8,000
28) 114.9 Oneida, NY 10,000
29) 114.9 Sherill, NY 3,000
30) 113.8 Auburn, NY 28,000
31) 114.0 Watertown, NY 26,000
32) 111.9 Syracuse, NY 147,000 (airport)
33) 111.6 Presque Isle, ME 9,000
34) 108.2 Utica, NY 60,000
35) 108.0 Lander, WY 7,000
36) 101.6 Calais, ME 3,000
37) 101.0 Juneau, AK 30,000
38) 100.3 Rochester, NY 219,000
39) 100.3 Flagstaff, AZ 53,000
40) 98.7 Geneva, NY 13,000
41) 97.0 Buffalo, NY 292,000

Thanks again Chris for sharing all the great city snow totals with us here at goldensnowball.com and once again, WOW! Don’t forget if you see a mistake or find another city that should be on the list, let us know so we can pass it along to Chris to keep his list updated. Have a great week all and look for snow throughout the week.

Snow totals stats source

I had a dream last night that it snowed a couple of days ago and Syracuse got something like 11 inches. But then when I woke up I looked out the window and there wasn’t 11 inches of snow. Just a little bit here and there in the yard. What a great dream it was. In other words,

What the (add your own cuss word here)heck happened to the snow? How can we have 11 inches of snow on the ground a day and a half ago and now practically nothing? The bigger question is why did I even bother to shovel the snow? I never had a chance to really play in it like I wanted to. Ok, enough of my whining.

Cold air is in the forecast for next week and early reports suggest that it might actually stick around this time which should help the skiing places out. Rumors are going all around about some big time snow coming our way. My sister informed me that the farmers almanac has a blizzard forecasted and a couple of other places are saying the same thing. Too early to tell what lies ahead but looking at what’s going on down in Texas, where early predictions are maybe a couple of inches of freezing rain I think anything can happen at this point.

My prediction is that the ski resorts will be set for awhile beginning right around Monday. Have a great weekend all!

Once again, Look out Buffalo, Here come Da Cuse. Now we need Rochester and Binghamton to get their snow season going. Syracuse continues to sled a little bit closer to Buffalo plowing another 10 inches away from the lead that Buffalo held. Syracuse’s final snow number for yesterday were 10.6 inches compared to Buffalo’s 0.4 inches of new snow. So far since the October snow storm that Buffalo had, Syracuse has been able to cut about a 2 1/2 foot lead down to a 10.1 inch lead with plenty of winter left for all of the city’s to step up.

For those of you cheering for Buffalo the bookies probably still have you as the favorites so I wouldn’t lose the faith. The lakes are still warm and the lake effect snow machine is still going to be cranking out the snow. Syracuse needs to keep sneaking up on the leader while they aren’t paying attention because Buffalo is due big time to get in on the lake effect. Last season Buffalo was just miles within winning the contest. Within miles of winning meaning that most of the towns just south of Buffalo were getting pounded throughout the season, but they just couldn’t seem to get it to come up a little more north to get in on the fun.

As for Rochester it was pretty much the same thing. Snow all around them but missing the city. That’s one of the funny things about lake effect snow bands. A little shift this way or that way and one town gets it were another town 5 miles away gets nothing. We were waiting in the forum for Tug Hill Tina to visit and let us know how much she received expecting to hear a couple of feet. She and her family are in the Champion area. Tina’s post is below which sums it up best as to how peculiar the snow bands can be:

“Such a strange thing. I got nothing, zip, zilch, nada………..now about 30 minutes away from me near the Tug they got nailed. The cool thing though to report is my drive from Lowville to Champion. I wish I had my camera with me to show all of you the lake effect wall of clouds dumping on the Tug while I was under intense sunshine. It was like I had entered a Twilight zone-I’m driving along on dry pavement and then wham it was as if someone had drawn a line of the highway, complete white out and slipping and a sliding all over the place. I flipped a U and went the other way to clear skies. Such a cool weather phenom!”

Have a Great Day All!

5:35PM UPDATE –

The stats were just posted by NOAA. The new stats are updated up to 4 – 5 pm for the citys. See the chart above! Syracuse’s totals are a little disappointing but I’m not greedy. Ok, so I am but at least Syracuse has melted Buffalo’s lead to just over a foot of snow now. Believe it or not the total snowfall for today for Syracuse sets a date record going back to 1959 which stood at 8.3 inches. So far today DaCuse reports in at 8.6 inches. Below are the totals so far for today’s snow.

Syracuse – 8.6
Rochester – 1.1
Buffalo – 0.5
Albany – 0.4
Binghamton – 0.3

With it being so long since our last snowfall that little kid feeling hit again last night and real early this morning. This had the same feeling as the first snowfall of the season. I looked out the window right before I headed upstairs to bed last night and it was just starting to come down. Then for whatever reason I woke up at around 5:30 this morning and looked out the window from my bed and saw that beautiful shine of white gold on the roof and with the help of a distant light I could see that it was still coming down pretty good here in the Syracuse area. Knowing there wasn’t a chance of falling right back to sleep I headed to the bay window in the living room to get a better look.

Yeah I know it’s not like we have never seen snow around here. But this is really only the second decent snowfall for us all season and the first one was way back in December. While looking out the window I noticed that my kids never put the trash out last night. *%$%$@%*64 I said to myself as I threw on some clothes and a jacket and headed out the door to put the trash out. Of course it probably could of waited till later in the morning but I think it was an excuse to get out there and feel it. To feel the lake effect snow whipping all around the neighborhood. This time real snow too, not the fake cotton stuff that’s now burried under the real snow.

Being a night owl normally and only seeing 5:30 – 6:00 am when I work late on the computer it was weird to see what goes on. A great sight to see was all the plow trucks flying up and down the street with the flashing lights as they headed down different streets to plow some of the driveways in the neighborhood. I’m sure by the end of our typical snow season it’s probably tough even for them to get up and head out in the cold to plow peoples driveways. My bet is the excitement was there for them this morning also. Sure they probably are looking forward to the money they make but my bet is it was still fun to get out and play in it this morning.

Anyways, I shoveled a path down the driveway and put the trash out, minus the cotton snow of course 😉 I figured while I am out there I might as well get a jump on the driveway and started to shovel it. After about five minutes of shoveling I hear the sound of another shovel scraping the driveway across the street. For me to be out there before 6am and shoveling is one thing, but for there to be 2 of us right across the street from each other that early was just plain crazy. Of course the only crazy part was that I was out there. I think it’s normal for my neighbors to be up and about that early. As I get near the bottom of the driveway I yell silently (is that possible) to Julie across the street. “Morning Julie, Ya Gotta Love it Huh, Finally Some Snow” in which she replies something like “Uh, No Not Really, Are Ya Crazy”. I just took it in stride and continued to shoveling figuring that Julie is not a morning person and it was better to leave it at that for now. Most likely when we shovel later she will be liking it more, shoveling it the second time in a day.

More on the neighborhood. I look at another neighbors, Frank and Donna’s house, next door to Julie’s and scratch my head. His driveway was already shoveled. Here it is not even 6:00 am yet and Frank beat both Julie and myself to the snow. So here I am thinking I am going to be the first one in my neighborhood to play in the snow and I was wrong. I looked at my next door neighbor and Cheryl’s lights were on. Now I start thinking to myself that I don’t think this is a normal everyday occurrence for all the neighborhood to be up this early. I think this is the kind of effect that a good blast of snowfall has on us big kids 😉

Enjoy the snow all and look for an update once the totals come in later in the day and evening.