First Alert Weather In-Depth: Where is the snow?

ROCHESTER, N.Y. I have not used my snow blower so far this season and I know there are likely many folks in Western New York saying the same thing.

Many people may be of the opinion that we should keep the mild weather. But I can tell you the folks down at Bristol Ski Mountain are not too happy about the current weather pattern.

The latest look at the numbers for snowfall at the Rochester Airport is pitiful. The long-term average for 30 years shows that we usually have already measured close to 33 inches of snow at this point in the season. Of course, we are nowhere near that with just 9.3 inches and that is almost 24 inches below normal.

And it is an interesting comparison between Rochester and Buffalo. We know Buffalo has been in the news because of the heavy snow they had earlier in the season. That snowfall was deadly and shut down the city. Right now their total seasonal snow is over 100 inches and with a distance of 55 miles away from Rochester you would think we would have more snow!

But the reason for the deficit was the proximity of the Lake Erie snow. The squalls were just far enough away that they had very little impact on Rochester. The lower snow totals in Rochester are to such an extreme that this season is now on the list of years with the least amount of snow.

No doubt we can make up the difference in the coming months and there are signs that the weather pattern will change next week. It is still rather mild for now, but the jet stream will be on the move by day 7 or 8 and that should bring some much colder weather by the middle of next week. The question is will it enough snow to get the snow blower out?