100 inches of snow in 5 days
we lived for a while in syracuse, new york, a place that regularly gets more snow and less media attention than its neighbor city, buffalo, but, since buffalo is larger, i guess that's the way the cookie crumbles... the first month we lived in syracuse, the city received over 80 inches of snow which was mind-boggling to me... oswego, the city in this story, a mere 40 miles to the northwest, along the shores of lake ontario, always got hit even harder, but, good lord, 100 inches in FIVE DAYS...?
i learned a lot of things about snow i didn't know when we lived there... for one thing, they have the equipment to handle it... even with massive amounts of snowfall, the plows were generally able to keep all the roads open, and life went on as usual... second, as in this picture, it was essential to keep too much snow from accumulating on your roof... obviously, there was the danger of collapse from the weight, but also, in the daily cycle of melt-freeze, ice dams would form at the edges of the roof, dramatically increasing the weight at the edges, and slowly destroying the eaves... many people installed electrical heat tape around the edges to prevent ice dams, and also to avoid the dangers of climbing around on a snow and ice-covered roof all winter... however, when the snow is too heavy, you can't avoid it, like the man in this photo... (note that the snow level is nearly up past his roofline...)
the other thing i learned while living in upstate new york is the real meaning of the seemingly innocuous term "lake effect snow..." storm fronts rotate counterclockwise... in that area of the country, storms often move up from the ohio valley, and the leading edge of the storm sweeps warmer air up from the south, which, when it hits the colder air up north, produces snow... the back end of the storm brings winds from the north and west, picking up moisture from the great lakes, producing even more snow, and that is what is called "lake effect..." what this one-two punch means, essentially, is that there are long periods of time when it never stops snowing... it was no oddity in syracuse to get three inches of snow a day for weeks at a time...
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New York's governor has declared a state disaster emergency in Oswego County, where five straight days of lake-effect squalls have dumped nearly 100 inches of snow. Even more snow was forecast through the weekend.
i learned a lot of things about snow i didn't know when we lived there... for one thing, they have the equipment to handle it... even with massive amounts of snowfall, the plows were generally able to keep all the roads open, and life went on as usual... second, as in this picture, it was essential to keep too much snow from accumulating on your roof... obviously, there was the danger of collapse from the weight, but also, in the daily cycle of melt-freeze, ice dams would form at the edges of the roof, dramatically increasing the weight at the edges, and slowly destroying the eaves... many people installed electrical heat tape around the edges to prevent ice dams, and also to avoid the dangers of climbing around on a snow and ice-covered roof all winter... however, when the snow is too heavy, you can't avoid it, like the man in this photo... (note that the snow level is nearly up past his roofline...)
the other thing i learned while living in upstate new york is the real meaning of the seemingly innocuous term "lake effect snow..." storm fronts rotate counterclockwise... in that area of the country, storms often move up from the ohio valley, and the leading edge of the storm sweeps warmer air up from the south, which, when it hits the colder air up north, produces snow... the back end of the storm brings winds from the north and west, picking up moisture from the great lakes, producing even more snow, and that is what is called "lake effect..." what this one-two punch means, essentially, is that there are long periods of time when it never stops snowing... it was no oddity in syracuse to get three inches of snow a day for weeks at a time...
Labels: lake effect snow, Mexico, Oswego, snow, Upstate New York
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posted by profmarcus at
2/10/2007
