Three Hours Of Shoveling

"No problem," the weather experts said.

"Only 4 to 6 inches in Syracuse," the experts said.

"NYC is going to get clobbered," the experts said.

Right...

Idiots can't give an accurate forecast 24 hours in the future and yet they still tell us what the weather's going to be like twenty years from now. 

We're getting another 6" to 8" by tomorrow.

So far this year we've had 130" of the white stuff. My snow blower is kaput.

Is This What It Takes?

For the last thirteen years I have participated in a task force to reduce violent crime in upstate NY.  Right now we are experiencing the most virulent amount of shootings I have ever seen in my almost 45 years in law enforcement.

Nothing is working; all our focused deterrence, AKA lever pulling strategies that we implemented (as espoused by by Dr. Kennedy and demonstrated in the Boston Cease Fire model) seem to have had no effect. One particularly violent area of the city has already had a 170% increase in shootings since another OJJDP (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention) model anti-violence program started two years ago.

But what seems to work is this:

Shootings down by half during snowy weekend in Chicago

Fifteen people were shot in Chicago over the weekend, less than half of last weekend’s toll and the fewest in the city in months.

Still, Chicago is on pace this year for the most homicides since at least 1998, when the police department said there were 704 homicides.

The number of people shot is also the most in decades: At least 4,170 people so far this year. With less than three weeks left in the year, that marks a 40 percent increase over the total number of shootings in 2015, according to Tribune data.

Forget the social workers, violence intervention specialists and all that other liberal crap. Seed the clouds, and bring the cold. Let them fear the Grim Ice Maker. Unleash the fury of Lake Michigan. Let's see if they can still kill one another through ski-bys.

I'm going to retire in a few months. I won't miss this at all. The nuclear black family has been all but destroyed in our inner cities. Black children have expressed strong identification with gangs as early as the second grade, more so than with members of their own families.

This will not get better by throwing money at it. We need parents who love their children more than themselves.

It's Syracuse

Weather advisory, may get up to a foot of lake effect snow tonight.
It was 72 this afternoon, beautiful sunny skies.
By 5 PM it was in the 40's; rain, cloudy, windy as all get out.
Running around in a t-shirt and three hours later need a winter coat.

Canada, what did we do to piss you off?

UPDATE:
So far it has snowed for over 40 hours. We got over two feet of snow and it is still coming down. The drift in front of my house was over 4' high. No way I'm shoveling that. Gonna go out through the garage.

Thanks, We're Good

We'll gladly relinquish the trophy. I've got no more room on my mantle.

Syracuse, N.Y. -- It's like the No. 1 seed getting knocked out in the second round of the tournament.

Syracuse, traditionally America's snowiest big city, has just been upset this season by Lakewood, Colo., thanks to a massive blizzard in the Rockies and Upper Midwest this week. Lakewood now sits atop the Golden Snow Globe contest as the snowiest city this season with at least 100,000 people.

It's a narrow lead: Lakewood has 72.6 inches to Syracuse's 72.2 inches. But Syracuse has no measurable snow in the forecast, and March is the snowiest month of the year in many parts of Colorado.

Snow Queen

As I said in a previous post, last week we moved our daughter from the snowiest city in the USA down to NYC, which promptly experienced its biggest snow storm since Hannibal crossed the Alps. I'm wondering if there is a connection. Did it follow her down? Can she be the Snow Queen?

In any event, on Friday her sister took a train to NYC to visit for a few days and now they're both  there. We're hoping she can return tonight.

And The Winner Is....

I'm not sure they're proud of it, but the current snow capital of America is Copenhagen, NY, a village of 801 souls just 80 miles north of me.

Copenhagen, N.Y. -- The snowiest place in America is Bill Hanchek's back yard just outside the Upstate New York village of Copenhagen, pop. 801.

More than 21 feet has fallen on Hanchek's small snowboard behind his house on River Road this season. That's more than any other spot in the United States as of Friday, including the Rockies and Alaska, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"It's more than usual," conceded Hanchek, who has been the official federal snow measurer for 23 years. "It's not unusually large yet, though."

Hanchek, who became a National Weather Service volunteer spotter after his wife, Kathy, saw a notice at the post office, recorded 358 inches in the winter of 2008-2009. Last winter, it was 325 inches.

Copenhagen lies in Upstate New York's Tug Hill region, perennially the snowiest area east of the Rockies. Tug Hill rises from the eastern end of Lake Ontario, and cold winter winds that whip across the lake pick up moisture and dumps aptly named lake effect snow, sometimes several feet per storm. While Buffalo gets national attention for its lake effect snows from Lake Erie, Lake Ontario stays open all winter while Erie freezes. That gives Tug Hill snow well into the spring.

In comparison, Syracuse has had 114 inches (9.5 ft.) of snow so far this season. 

Por Favor, No Más

Dear Lord, let this be the last of it for the season.

It doesn't look very bad in the picture, but the snow is coming down at 3/4" to an inch an hour. It's supposed to keep snowing for the next sixteen hours.

That's not clouds in the background, that's snow. You should be able to see four or five houses right behind me, the interstate and a whole bunch of other homes. Only one, the closest on the left, is visible.

Yesterday it was beautiful, 50 and sunny.

The County let us go early this afternoon and I came home to about 7-8" in the driveway. And it is that wet, heavy snow. It's like shoveling cement.

One of my daughters was over to do her wash and helped me shovel much of the driveway. My cardiologist would bury his boot up my arrhythmia if he knew I was shoveling snow.

Pete, my good guy neighbor across the street, is out now with his snow blower doing driveways and sidewalks. God bless him.

We're #1 *groan*

 Hendrick's Chapel on the SU Quad.

Once again my alma mater receives a rather dubious distinction, the snowiest university in the country - average of 124 inches of white stuff a year. No one else is even close. And we're proud of it, we even compete for the honor..

In fact, the top three snowiest universities are all in upstate NY.

It's the Great Lakes - the cold Canadian winds blowing across all that water pick up a lot of moisture, freeze it, then dump it on us.

It's like a terrible Canadian insult; a freezing, Arctic-driven, meteorological bowel movement.

As a freshman arriving from the comparatively paltry snowfall of downstate Long Island, I just wasn't prepared to be wading knee deep in snow as I trudged to work as a breakfast cook at oh dark hundred.

I can't believe that I'm still here 46 years later.

While many are used to the cold that comes with the winter season, not all regions are ready to handle the snow. However, to some students, faculty and staff, snow is a normal part of life on campus.

Below are the top 10 snowiest colleges in the United States, ranked by the school's annual average snowfall.

The list is here.

Of course once the co-eds get used to the weather it ain't too bad.

Nah! Nah! Missed Us!

We didn't miss it by much. Just north of us got pounded. We got a few inches - a light dusting by upstate NY standards.

It was as they say, a good ol' fashion lake effect pounding -- a snowburst -- 60 to 72 inches of snow (confirmed). Put simply, they got hammered -- all of this while a major lake effect research project is going on east of Lake Ontario.

The band of lake effect snow that was east of Lake Ontario is now a shadow of its former self. It's south of Syracuse and has broken up into smaller bands of snow.

[...]In the wake of this lake effect event, parts of Oswego, Jefferson and Lewis Counties are now under 2 to 5 feet of snow.

!!!111!!!    UPDATE   !!!!111!!!

We're #1, We're #1!

The Framer's Almanac Pegs Syracuse as the Worst Winter Weather City

5 Worst Winter Weather Cities

1. SYRACUSE, NEW YORK “Cold,” “clammy,” “snowy” are three great ways to describe Syracuse weather—from October through April. Winter starts very early and lasts late, with plenty of snow and extremely cold temperatures. Winter daytime temperatures average in the lower 30s, with nighttime lows in the teens, but temperatures as low as minus 25°F have been recorded. Snow also makes winter uncomfortable in Syracuse, averaging almost 120 inches per season. During the winter of 2009–2010, Syracuse was again the winner of the prestigious “Golden Snowball Award,” celebrating the city with most snowfall for the winter in upstate New York, beating out such snowy cities as Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, and Binghamton. Syracuse also made our Farmers’ Almanac “10 Worst” list in 2002. Another reason why this city makes the worst winter weather list — December, January, and February are typically gloomy, with Syracuse receiving only one third of the sunshine possible, because of considerable cloud cover.

Makes me proud. We deserve it....

Egypt is our b***h.

I Don't Believe It...

Look at the last city in Yahoo's list of the Best Places to Retire on  $75 a Day.

Once you no longer need to worry about getting to work in the morning, you're free to have a second cup of coffee, look out your window at the pillowy snow drifts and think about all the money you're saving by not retiring in a more expensive area.

Then why are so many people moving away from here? The population in Syracuse has dropped from 190,000 in 1970 to about 144,000 today. The County's population has been stagnant for the past 40 years; 14.6% are aged 65 and older as opposed to the national average of 13.7%.

My doctor has already warned me not to do anymore shoveling in the winter.
Sure, retire to Syracuse and die face down in a snow drift.