More on our snowless winter...(2-6-12)
We are about a week through the month of February and there is still no snow here in the Syracuse area. Today (February 6th) we cross some interesting thresholds in terms of seasonal snowfall. First, assuming we don’t get any measurable snow by midnight we are going to be stuck at a seasonal total of 31.8”. We are now a full 50” below our seasonal snow total through this date. We are also about 100” below last season’s snow total through the February 6th!Also, we have been tracking how we are doing compared to the other least snowy winters and as of today we were now ahead of the pace of all of those years.Winter | Snow Thru Feb. 6th | Seasonal Snow |
2011-12 | 31.8” | ????? |
1994-95 | 33.9” | 62.2” |
2001-02 | 35.8” | 59.4” |
1982-83 | 43.7” | 66.0” |
1961-62 | 47.2” | 77.3” |
1956-57 | 50.1” | 76.1” |
Even though the air behind the front looks to be chilly (we may struggle to get much beyond 20 on Saturday) the set up doesn’t look very favorable for lake effect. First, the air moving in is rather dry and second all signs we’ve seen so far point to our winds quickly turning into the north which is not a great direction if you are looking for significant lake effect snow.Plus, if the computer models are correct, this cold air won’t stick around for very long. This has been a trend throughout this mild and snowless winter so far. Here are the ensemble means for the European (left) and GFS (right) for the period Tuesday-Thursday next week:
Although this an average for the three days in the middle of next week these maps from the jet stream level certainly don’t look that winter-like. We’ll keep you posted on what happens beyond this period as we start to approach the end of February.
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