Happy first day of Spring. More about that in Dave Longley’s blog from earlier today (you get 2 blogs for the price of one today) As our seasonal snow totals here in Syracuse gets close 110” people are starting to ask whether we at normal yet for the season.  The answer is no, but we are close.  I’ve seen 113” listed in a number of places for an average and I think that is an old number.  What we currently are using is 121.1” which is based on 1971-2000 averages.  Here is the monthly breakdown:

October                       0.5”

November                    11.1”

December                    28.6”

January                        33.2”

February                      24.0”

March                          18.8”

April                             4.8”

May                             0.1”

As a side note, that .1” average for May is based on just 3 snowfalls: May 17 1973 1.2”, May 9, 1977 1.0” and the infamous Mother’s Day 1996 snow when 2.1” fell. When you average that over 30 years you come up with .1”

Anyhow, the seasonal snow total jumped from 113” to 121” because when the new 30 year averages were figured earlier this decade the National Weather Service dropped all the winters in the 1960s.  6 out of those 10 years were below 100” and none were above 125”  In their place were the 1990 which were very productive for snow. Four of the top ten snowiest winters in Syracuse history came in the 1990s thus the 8 inch jump in our average.

The way things are going this decade, that average may go higher the next time it is figured after the winter of 2010-11. An additional 3 winters since 2000 have cracked the top ten. Using the numbers from 1981-82 through last winter we would have a seasonal snowfall of 126.8”

The Lake Effect Challenge for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society officially went above $30 today.

And in a totally unrelated story I just picked Kansas to beat Memphis in my NCAA pool.