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Our January Thaw....(1-6-12)

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Reported by: Jim Teske

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Published: 1/06 5:18 pm

Updated: 1/06 5:34 pm

Here we are January 6th and we’re topping 50 degrees in Syracuse. In addition to the 50 degree warmth, we also be more than 10 degrees above normal for our high temperature today and those kind of days have been fairly common place over the last three and a half months. Here a closer look at our above normal days since September 1st:

Days at/above normal	93 out of 128 Days	73%
Days 5 F or more above normal	67 out of 128 Days	52%
Days 10 F or more above normal	41 out of 128 Days	32%

The 50 degree weather got me thinking about how typical it is for us during January to be this warm. I looked back at all the years since records have been kept at the airport and broke down the data in decades to see if there are any trends. Here is what I found.

Decade	Years 50F or above in January	Total Days 50F or above in January
1950s	7 out of 10	23
1960s	4 out of 10	5
1970s	7 out of 10	15
1980s	7 out of 10	11
1990s	9 out of 10	24
2000s	8 out of 10	33

The take a way from this is that, on a year to year basis, 50 degree weather in January in Syracuse is not unusual. Since 1950 it has occurred in 70% of the years and that includes taking into account the decade of the 1960s when it happened in only 4 of the 10 years. There does, however, seem to be a trend upward for the number of 50 degree weather in a given January. Whereas in the 1970s and 80s we were averaging about one 50 degree day in January in the last decade that shot up to roughly 3 in any given year.

One other thing struck me this morning. I noticed that the snow cover this morning at the Syracuse airport was 2 inches. I did a little digging to compare our snow cover this year to last winter. You remember that we had our snowiest December on record (December 2010) and our seasonal total to this point that winter was over 77”. Guess what the snow cover was on January 6th 2011? Just 3 inches. If that number surprises you then I think it may be due to the perception you (and many central New Yorkers) have about our winters. People seem to remember the 179” of snow we had last winter (it was the 4th snowiest on record) and think we were in the snow all winter long but during most central New York winters there is an ebb and flow that takes place from November through late March. You can get a ‘burst’ of snow over a week or two where we build up the snow pack then a thaw can strike, whittling down the snow to next to nothing.

What people may forget about last winter is that most of December’s record snow fell during the first half of the month. It was mostly lake effect snow so quite a bit of it settled then the last half of the month into early January was mild which caused most of the snow to melt. Actually, by January 4th 2011 there was just a trace of snow on the ground.

Here is another way to look at it. I found these maps (from the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center) that show snow cover for this year and last year. Again, they are both for January 6th.

January 6th 2011

January 6th 2012

Outside more snow on the ground in Oswego County at this point last winter these maps don’t look all rather similar even though the snowfalls through each season up to this point are very different (77.3” vs. 12.9”)

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