A little summary of what took place last night with the Golden Snowball competition and the Weather Channel. Earlier in the week the weather channel contacted me about perhaps doing an interview sometime on the Abrams and Bettes show. I thought about it for about 2 seconds and said sure, it sounds like fun. Well yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from a man named Pete. A super nice guy saying they wanted to do the interview that evening. For the record I did try to pass this off to Dennis Brogan but couldn’t reach him. He’s use to the media and handles it well 🙂

Calm, cool and smooth. That’s me. NOT! Knowing the show was live panic set in as soon as the phone rang at around 8:42pm. It was Pete telling me to get ready, about a minute to go. I told Pete what a sissy man I am, he laughed and the next thing I know I was talking (stuttering) with Mike Bettes and Stephanie Abrams live on the weather channel. I would of loved to gotten a lot more in about the contest but at least the weather channel knows about it now. It would be fun to hear them mention our contest when they mention our city’s during the forecasts.

I mentioned to my forum members that most likely I will be saying Ummm a lot. I did that during the press conference in December when we awarded the trophy to Jeff, the man in charge of our DPW. One of my forum members said to just pause instead. I told him I would try that but if he hears a long pause, that means I probably passed out from the pressure 🙂 The worse thing was that while I was on the phone doing the interview the call waiting was beeping like crazy. Talk about losing concentration.

The biggest screw up (and there were many) other than the heavy breathing which I will explain in a minute was be trying to mention about how we kid and razz each others city’s and mentioning how someone from Buffalo made snowmans. 1 snowman + 1 snowman = 2 snowmans Yeah I’m an idiot and normally proud of it except for when it comes to national attention on one of my favorite stations, the Weather Channel. As soon as I said snowmans I just rolled my eyes. I did recover the next sentence though and said snowmen. Have I mentioned yet how attractive Stephanie is and man what a smile. Sorry, I’m wondering off a bit.

As for the heavy breathing on the show I blame that on my back. Really! It’s nothing to do with my bad habit of cigarettes. I pulled my back out several days ago from shoveling some of the heavy snow that came down last week. I did send Pete an email apologizing for that and told him that I can’t help it I get excited when talking about snow and the Golden Snowball award.

Ok, enough about last night and a big thanks to the Weather Channel, Stephanie, Mike and Pete for giving us a chance to explain what our contest is. In reality the weather channel is on here most of the day. I’m a little skeptical about putting a link up to the video but what the hay. For those of you who missed it last night and need a chuckle check it out at the Abrams and Bettes section on the weather channel at http://www.weather.com/aboutus/television/abramsandbettes/index.html?from=footer Just scroll down to the video section.

Also Sean Kirst from the Post Standard has a new blog now and he is looking for some feedback about the Winterfest and the Golden Snowball contest at http://blog.syracuse.com/kirst/2007/02/the_golden_snowball_and_winter.html You might of heard me mention Sean’s name. No doubt he is the person most responsible for getting and keeping this contest in the news and growing. Have a super weekend all!

If you have a chance tonight check out the Abrams and Bettes show on the weather channel tonight. They are going to do a small segment on our great New York Golden Snowball contest. The show is on at 8pm Mondays – Fridays. It’s a great show with a lot of live broadcasting around the US and then some.

You also may get a chance to see the sissy man snowman, me, make a fool out of myself during a telephone interview. You all know how I go into panic mode during interviews. So I will apologize now for all the ummms, stuttering and wrong answers that I give. I will however to my best to make NY proud. Unfortunately during interviews the toad in me comes out. More to come as it happens and a warm, make that a cold, snowy welcome to Goldensnowball.com for those fans of Stephanie and Mike coming from the weather channel tonight.

Who would of thought that Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo would even be close to their season snow averages this soon with the way the stats were just a couple of weeks ago. Not me! One good storm along with some lake effect has put the 3 city’s on track to at least hit the average annual snowfall and maybe then some.

It’s still a race and there is still a lot of time left for anything to happen for any of the cities. Like I said a couple of times, watch out for Rochester. They are showing some new snow almost every day now and it’s just a matter of time when they set up just right into some decent lake effect snow. As for Buffalo, they have always been sneaky when it comes to their snow. Look what they snuck in on us all in October, 22+ inches which will be a record that will be hard for any of the cities to topple.

Don’t let Syracuse’s 104.3 inches of snow fool ya’s into thinking it’s a wrap. Wayyyy too much time left in the season and I don’t think we are done with the coastal storms either yet. I’m thinking at least a couple more of them which normally benefit the south-east cities in New York but they have hung to the west more than once. If that happens Rock City could benefit by the storm and the lake effect just like Syracuse did this last one.

Greg Lavadas from the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester has an article out today about the contest at http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20070219&Category=NEWS01&ArtNo=702190332&Ref=AR

I know what you are all thinking. Like they need any advertising at all right now up North and I am sure they have all they can handle right now. True but people are visiting another website I own and looking for plowing services. Here’s the situation! Myself and my partner started up a free local coupons and savings website for Central New York. We started it up not too long ago and we noticed it has been getting some visitors, not a lot but enough to our website at www.cnydiscounts.com that are searching for snow plow services in the Fulton, Oswego area. With the situation up there with roofs and them still clearing the snow the chances are some people might be having a hard time finding someone. Anyways, We figured we would give a listing to the north country so that maybe the people coming to our site can hook up with someone in their area who has some time to get around to them.

So if anyone snow plowers, residential or commercial from up north are interested in having their business ad listed at http://www.cnydiscounts.com/snow-plowing.html at no charge for the rest of this season just go to http://www.cnydiscounts.com/internet-advertising.html and scroll down to where it says Contact and send us an email with a brief description of your business info, area’s you can cover and contact information for us to post on the site. If you can offer the people some kind of discount like 5 – 10 percent off that would be great also but not necessary.

Ok, back to the Golden Snowball award. This last week has made a huge difference all around. A close race for first is slipping away but not over yet. After the 10.1 inches that Syracuse received from yesterday from some lake effect snow they jumped to a lead of over 2 feet. Now way did I imagine that would happen. Not this week anyways. Rochester remains just 5 inches away from sliding past Buffalo. I kind of expected Rochester to make some kind of charge but not a 2 day charge. Binghamton and Albany still need quite a bit but they took a huge jump after the storm. Neither are a threat yet but a couple more of those storms they could come into play.

Eric, a visitor to GSB sent an email to me about how if the snow we just received in Syracuse the last 29 days was all in one month we would of broken a monthly record that was set in January of 2004 of 78.1 inches. Eric mentioned that when he took his daughter to college on Jan 18th we only had around 12 inches give or take a little. If that’s the case that means from then until Feb 16th we have received around another 86 inches or so. That’s a lot of snow! There is still plenty of time even though Feb is a short month to break the Syracuse monthly record. Right now we are at 48.0 inches, only 30.2 to go for a new record. It would be interesting to see some of the other cities monthly records. Have a great weekend all!

I just want to let you all know, especially those of you up north that the snow dance had nothing to do with all this. At least that’s what my lawyer told me to say. On January 7th I did the first snow dance of the season. Remember only two are allowed in a year in order for them to work. I did th mild version of the dance. I think 🙁 OK, I could of screwed up and went a little over board and really got into it once I started the dance but I still think it was the snow God. At least that’s who my lawyer told me to blame.

The first snow dance of the year is one to bring a lot of snow fast, then some warm weather, then a lot more and so on. Since the dance for some reason we have been stuck in an Arctic air system or something with the temps probably averaging around 20 degrees if that. Maybe NYCO can figure out what went wrong with the Snow God this year my lawyer said and make it ease up just a hair. For those of you who are loving all this snow, I take full blame.

For those of you who aren’t buying my story and still blaming the snow dance, I want you to know I take full responsibility. My lawyer told me to beg for forgiveness, blame it on my parents and to let everyone know I will be entering rehab as soon as I can get out of the driveway and can find a snow dance rehab in our area. To all the thousands of kids that email me begging me to do another snow dance I have to say no. For now anyways. You have had enough snow days for the time being.

Jill from Buffalo is thinking about doing a snow dance to help Buffalo pull this years Golden Snowball contest off. She better get going because Da Cuse is starting to pull away a little and Rock City is right on your back. Only 5 inches away. Who ever would of thought that when Rochester had only 44 inches at the beginning of the week. Hey, have a great day all!

Gotta love all this snow, eh. I was thinking about the people up north as my son and I were shoveling last night. Thinking of all the consecutive days that Oswego, Mexico, Fulton, Parish and the others had to shovel this white crap, oops, make that white gold. Gotta respect them for keeping up their spirits during it all. The plows came through today and did their super clean-up after the storm. You know, where they get the roads right down to the pavement and knock a little bit off the snowbanks that end up putting about 4 feet at the end of your driveway. Still, gotta love all this snow and all we can do is hope more is on the way 🙁

The Golden Snowball contest is getting more and more exciting as the snow falls down each time. Rochester has made a great comeback as you can see. It was only a few days ago where they were stuck at around 44 inches or so. Now they are knocking on Buffalo’s door and only a couple of blocks away from knocking on Syracuse’s door. It’s a 3 way race now. Binghamton is trying to make a comeback and from what a little snowbird told me there just may be another storm in the works come mid next week. Binghamton and Albany normally make out pretty good from these types of storms that come up from the south, south west.

There was a lot of talk about Syracuse’s totals that have come in so far on some other blogs plus a couple of emails sent. One of the discussions is at Sean’s home on the web at http://www.syracuse.com/forums/kirst/ about the numbers being low. Some things to remember which was brought up on Sean’s blog by one of his visitors is that when we measure we have to keep in my the blowing snow which can raise the totals.

Another good point made by a meteorologist from NOAA is to consider with a storm like this, the further south and east, and higher in elevation, the more snow you’ll get. Also read what Eddie one of Sean’s readers has to say at http://www.syracuse.com/kirst/weblog/ which I won’t admit to because I know the Buffalonians will be pounding me tonight about the airports again. I’m kidding, pound away. The way I see it, where the airport is, it’s a push. Snow up north maybe a plus, snow from the south maybe a minus ; ) It all evens out in the long run. My guess is that NOAA, the official stats will probably end up coming in at somewhere around 12 – 14 inches for the storm for Syracuse’s airport. That doesn’t mean that the city and the towns surrounding Syracuse didn’t get what they think they got. Indeed there were some decent amts posted by snow spotters all around the city so you really were shoveling what you might of measured and thought you were shoveling. Below are some weather spotter stats from around Onondaga county:

ONONDAGA COUNTY…

CAMILLUS 21.5 642 AM 2/15
TULLY 20.5 1031 AM 2/15
MANLIUS 17.5 930 PM 2/14
CICERO 17.2 800 AM 2/15
TULLY 16.5 900 PM 2/14
CLAY 16.3 743 PM 2/14
MARCELLUS 16.0 730 PM 2/14
BREWERTON 15.5 700 AM 2/15 OFFICIAL OBSERVATION
EAST SYRACUSE 15.5 730 PM 2/14
SYRACUSE AIRPORT 13.2 1200 AM 2/15 OFFICIAL OBSERVATION
TULLY 11.7 700 AM 2/15 OFFICIAL OBSERVATION
SUNY ESF SYRACUSE 10.5 700 AM 2/15 OFFICIAL OBSERVATION

I pretty sure I saw a weather spotter’s snow totals from the city of Syracuse which was a total of 17 inches. Not from the airport location. I’ll post more on the storm totals for all the GSB cities as they become available from NOAA. Enjoy the day all!