For starts let me say I like Central New York and its weather as a whole. However, I have issues with the month of November and there are 3 reasons why. First, there are way too many cloudy days, second everything starts to turn brown and three did I mention that it’s too cloudy?
Blame Lake Ontario. It is still relatively mild this time of year and as colder and colder air masses drop in from Canada you get lake effect clouds that form downwind of the lake. With the predominate wind direction out of northwest, you guessed it, Central New York gets the end result—clouds. Unfortunately this is fact of life in this part of the country. Until you somehow figure how to fill Lake Ontario in or at least cool it off much faster in the fall we are going to be stuck with more than our fair share of days with leaden gray skies. This month and next are the cloudiest months all year in Syracuse with on average barely 25% of the possible sunlight.
Amazingly, so far during November 2007 Syracuse has been basking in sunshine. Ok, it’s not exactly Florida but we are averaging almost twice as much sunshine as normal! I checked the numbers through yesterday (November 13th) and we were running at 46%.
However, before you know it the clouds will return. A look at some of our long range computer models points toward a more active storm track over the next 2 weeks which will translate into more clouds. So hunker down as we start the cloudy season here in Syracuse. It’s not all bad, though. At least Syracuse basketball has started up again and the team looks good.
