Compared to last year at this time, snowfall has been comparatively mild. The national leader (Lakewood, Colorado) has had only 49 inches. Last year at this time, some cities were already around 80.
Perennial contender Syracuse is starting to make its move, and is now in the top five. Over the course of many years, Syracuse gets the most snowfall - more than 120 inches per year on the average - and has won the Golden Snow Globe three years out of the six since the friendly competition began.
Last year's champs (120 inches) came from three cities in the general Boston area and the four cities in the Syracuse-Erie snowbelt, all of which topped 100 inches. Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo and Erie are close together, forming almost a straight line which is only about 240 miles long
The Syracuse-Erie snowbelt took four of the five top spots in the brutal 2013-2014 winter, with Erie and Syracuse each topping 130 inches.
The highest total since they started awarding the Golden Snow Globe is the massive 179 inches accumulated by Syracuse in 2010-2011.
I suppose the real winners, if they were large enough cities to be eligible, might be Oswego and Watertown NY, two more upstate cities which are right on the Eastern shore of Lake Ontario, more or less north of Syracuse. When I was a kid at the end of January in 1966, Oswego got 103 inches in one weekend, with winds approaching 60 MPH. And they already had something like 18 inches on the ground before the storm began! In 1971-72, they received 324 inches in all. The extreme conditions there helped inspire SUNY Oswego undergraduate Al Roker (class of '76) to make a career out of weather.
Friday, February 05, 2016
Current Top 25 Snowiest US Cities | Golden Snow Globe
Current Top 25 Snowiest US Cities | Golden Snow Globe
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By restricting this to 'cities', it kind of misses out on the real snow. I lived about 50 miles from Syracuse, so I understand the amount that area gets, however mountain communities in the West get way more than that. At Lake Tahoe, for instance (population about 50,000, but mostly unincorporated), the average is 125 in at lower elevations, and the higher ski resorts average 300-500 inches!
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