What a beautiful sight it is outside. White, bright and No grass showing for a chance. Look at the numbers in the snow chart above. Who would of thought that the race would turn out to be this close? Well in reality a lot of us who know CNY weather would of thought it. All the numbers aren’t in yet and there is still a chance for more snow for pretty much all of the Golden Snowball cities.

Just a reminder as to when stats are reported. Buffalo and Rochester’s stats are updated around 5:30am every day and the other 3 city’s are updated just after midnight. Then a couple of other updates throughout the day. By 5:30 – 6:00 when Binghamton NOAA does another update we should know if we have a new leader or not and my bet is that it will be really close. I’m off for now to watch my sons CYO game at Le Moyne College and hopefully to catch a little bit of the Le Moyne game. Have a great day all!

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!