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Any hope for snow lovers????? (12-12-11)

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Syracuse is still waiting for it's first inch of snow one week into the month of December. Compare this picture with one taken almost one year to the day. (Jim Teske)

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Snowless in Syracuse (Jim Teske)

Reported by: Jim Teske

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Published: 12/12/2011 1:06 pm

Updated: 12/12/2011 1:39 pm

The snow drought continues here in Syracuse this weekend. A cold front moved through overnight Friday but there was only a trace of snow at the airport and we are still below an inch of snow for the season. We are about 18” below normal for the season to date. We are a full four feet below where we were at this point last winter

Although it is still early we do find ourselves in an unusual position. We are now in last place snowfall-wise when ranked against the other large Upstate New York cities:

City	2011-12	2010-11
Binghamton	6.7”	22.9”
Albany	6.1”	1.3”
Buffalo	2.8”	18.7”
Rochester	2.1”	28.0”
Syracuse	.7”	48.5”

It’s interesting to see us so far down this list but we all know just one day of lake effect snow could push us to the top.

I did get a humorous call in the office last week from someone who said they heard a rumor that there would be no winter this year. I had to chuckle at that. As I mentioned in my last blog the pattern doesn’t look all that conducive for snow through the end of next week ( the middle of December) but here are some numbers that will give some hope to snow enthusiast.

First, even in our least snowiest winters since records have been kept at the airport, we still ended up with about five feet of snow for the entire winter. The lowest totals were in 2001-02 (59.4”), 1994-95 (62.2”) and 1982-83 (66.0”). The next tier of low snowfall winters are in the 70-80 inch range. Check out the list on Dave Longley’s latest blog. That means even if we are on par with those kinds of winters we still have to get 60 to 80 inches of snow in roughly the next 3 months. That’s still a decent amount of snow, roughly at a rate of 20 to 25 inches per month. That sounds like winter to me.

Here is another nugget of information that I found that might give skiers and snowmobilers at least some glimmer of hope for the remainder of the winter. I looked back at years where we had less then 20” of seasonal snow by the end of December. Here are those years and how much snow we ended up for the entire winter season:

Year	Snow By Dec 31st	Seasonal Snow
2001-02	8.0”	59.4”
1994-95	9.4”	62.2”
1965-66	11.6”	118.8”
2006-07	12.2”	140.2”
1982-83	12.8”	66.0”
1998-99	13.5”	98.3”
1949-50	15.4”	118.0”
1979-80	15.4”	93.4”
1957-58	18.5”	143.8”

You do see the least snowiest winters in there (no surprise) but I think the good sign for snow lovers is that a slow start to the winter season doesn’t always mean it is going to stay that way. Four out of the 9 samples above (44%) had near or even above normal snowfall seasons. One of those winters, 1965-66 included the Blizzard of ‘66 and in 1957-58 we had our snowiest February with almost 73” of snow.

So again, I don’t have inside information that the pattern is about to change. It’s just the numbers from the past say that in spite of the slow start to winter it doesn’t necessarily mean it will be a slow finish.

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