It’s officially unofficial that the snowiest city in the United States is Syracuse, NY.  Lets just hope I didn’t blow it this time.  Remember the Washington, DC Big Oooops   Anyways I’ve looked and looked, talked and talked to several people and everything is pointing to Syracuse being the King of the snow mountain for the 2009 – 2010 snow season.  The stats below are as of earlier today which is May 15th and this date seems to be a good cutoff date for the National Snow Contest.  A couple of the bigger Colorado cities did just get some snow added to their totals but it isn’t enough to knock off Da Cuse.  If anyone out there has any info on a snowier big city than Syracuse, pop 100,000 or more please let us know by emailing us at comments@goldensnowglobe.com .

I did talk to a couple of people from a couple of stations for NOAA, the national weather service and they both seemed to also think the stats should be right.  That said there is always that chance that we have missed a city this being the first annual Golden Snow Globe contest and kind of a test run for the first season.  Below you can see what we came up with for the top 10 snowiest BIG cities.  There is no doubt that it was pretty time consuming but the fun comments from all of you and just the competition of all of the cities competing for bragging rights made it worthwhile.   Being the first season of the contest all I can say is I hope I got it right with calling is Syracuse, NY. 

Steven, our Golden Snow Cast master did an awesome job with his forecasts.  I think he came out at being something like 90 + percent right which is pretty good.  Hey he is looking for a job in meteorology, forecasting, mapping, burger flipping or whatever you have for him.  OK, I’m kidding about the burger flipping kind of jobs but he is a graduate of State College and he knows his stuff.  Thanks Steven for all the time and hard work you put into the site this season.

More to come on how the snow season went and look for some improvements come next season including getting a lot of the populations up to date and hopefully some cool contests and prizes for our visitors.  There were a lot of good suggestions from quite a few people and we will be adding some of them next season.  Thanks again to all of you and to those of you who made this a fun contest by posting and emailing.

We’ll try to get a summary posted on how the cities started, finished and how some of the cities like Baltimore, Washington, DC, Pitt and others came out of nowhere to land in the top 10 at certain times during the contest.

Have a Great Weekend All!

I’m still trying to make sure we call this contest right and have had a couple of conversations with some people from Noaa at a couple different weather stations.  From what I gathered is that if the city isn’t coming up with snow stats on NOAA the chances are there isn’t a weather station for that city and whatever comes in is probably from snow spotters.  I’ve said it sever time how much I respect what snow spotters do and the time they put into it but we are going to go with cities that have NOAA weather stations.

I talked with Chad Gimmestad from the Colorado NOAA station and got some really good input from him.  Thanks Chad for taking the time   I’ve come up with a date that should be safe enough to call the contest or hopefully safe enough to anyways.  We wanted to go with May 1st which is when we call the smaller snow contest at goldensnoball.com but seeing how the national snow contest involves many more cities we have decided to extend it just a little longer.  Colorado and a couple of other states are pretty much the last to receive snowfall so we decided to base it on that.  Snow is in the forecast for some of the Colorado cities depending on the temps for the next day or two and it could turn out to be a significant snow event.  With that said, the date is picked and it is soon so stay tuned is all I can say while I keep working the phones to make sure we get it right.  Of course there is always a chance we don’t and look like the normal fools we really are trying to have a fun contest.

Cheers and Have a great week all.

Cheers, Patrick

You didn’t believe I’d just reveal the top 10 that way, did you? Big surprise for me among the 40 listed is Cheyenne, WY almost cracking the top 10, coming in 13th. A little humorous to me is Cold Bay Alaska, population 74, has 74 inches, one inch per person. Probably won’t see that again any time soon. Now, here are the top 10:

10. Ely, NV: 91.1
Ely’s population is 4,041 and just snuck in ahead of Burlington, VT and has the most snow among the Nevada cities.

9. Erie, PA: 91.4
Erie, population 103,717, the 2nd place city among those with population over 100,000 comes in 9th among all NWS sites.

8. Lander, WY: 102.4
Lander, population 6,867, has the most snow among Wyoming sites.

7. Elkins, WV: 104.7
Elkins, population 7,032, is 7th overall, but is 2nd among West Virginia stations.

6. Syracuse, NY: 106.1
Syracuse, with a population of 147,036, having the most snow among cities with population over 100,000, is 6th place.

5. Yakutat, AK: 107.1
Yakutat, population 680, is the top city among those with population under 1,000.

4. Beckley, WV: 132.9
Beckley’s population is 17,254 and has the most snow among West Virginia sites.

3. Flagstaff, AZ: 141.8
As mentioned in the previous post, Flagstaff, with population 52,894 is not the top city, but does have the most among cities with a population of 50,000 or more.

2. Marquette, MI: 145.6
Marquette, population 19,661, has the most snow among those with a population of 5,000 or more and is in 2nd place overall.

1. Valdez, AK: 293.3
Valdez, population 4,036, with almost 300 inches of snow, claims the top spot among all NWS sites.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this countdown for the season among all NWS sites. Remember, all snowfall data is from early April, and population statistics are from the most recent estimates available from city-data.com.

Have a great week everyone!

Albany, having the least snow among the Golden Snowball cities, is in a tie for 82nd place in the country. It’s also a bit interesting to see the differences among cities with multiple reporting stations. For example, New York City’s Central Park station is in 62nd place, while La Guardia in 77th and JFK was on the previous post at 101. Grand Forks’ North Dakota University station is in 76th but the airport was 134th. Washington, DC’s Reagan is 51st, with Dulles yet to be revealed. Just goes to show how much difference a few miles can make. That is the beauty, and the beast, of the system.

In the final update, the top 50 will be shown. Who is #1? It’s not Syracuse, NY…or Flagstaff, AZ.

Once again, the surprises to me are the cities in Alaska and Colorado being so low. Other than that, this table of 50 cities has more northern representation than the previous two posts, which was bound to happen at some point.

The next update will showcase the cities in the 51-100 range. At least one of them is a Golden Snowball city.

Have a great weekend everyone!

I did not expect cities in Colorado or Montana to be this far down on the list, and yet, here they are at 154, 155 and 173. There is another Alaska city fairly down the rankings as well, Fairbanks in 156. Other than that, this seems to be as expected, most of the cities in this ranking area are in the southern portion of the country.

The next SnowDown update will feature rankings 101-150. More northern cities will be shown, including one from New York State.

There are a few surprises to this list. First off, only one official reporting station in California reported measurable snowfall for the season (as of early April): Campo with 1 inch. I know some parts of California can get a lot of snowfall, but apparently none of them are official measurements. Second, I did not expect to see any Alaska cities to be in the 100s, let alone the 200s. However, Annette is there, ranked 202.

Congrats to New Orleans on being the city with the least measurable snowfall for the season!

Next SnowDown update will feature cities ranked 151-200. Colorado is known for snow, and yet, one of their cities fell in that range, as well as another Alaskan city.

First, all snowfall stats are from the National Weather Service. If a city does not have NWS stats, I did not include them on the list. Second, to make the list, a city must have measurable snowfall shown. That is anything 0.1 or more for the season. If a city has missing data, trace amounts, or no snowfall, they were not included in the list. Third, population does not matter. If a site meets the first two criteria, it’s going to be listed, whether it has a population of 100 or 100,000 or 100,000,000. Population data is taken for the city listed on the NWS site. If it is a multiple city area (such as Scranton/Wilkes Barre), the first name listed counts. This is just for quick statistics purposes and has no barring on the results. Finally, a city that has multiple reporting stations will have all sites included. For example, I consider New York City to have 3 sites: Central Park, JFK and La Guardia airports. All three will count separately as New York (Central Park), New York (JFK) and New York (La Guardia) with population data for New York City.

All snowfall statistics were taken the first week of April. With over 250 cities making the list, and having my course work start up again soon, I would rather not go through all cities another round, especially since most of the cities have not seen substantial snowfall since the start of the month.

In the next few days, I will begin revealing the results of the 2009-10 Golden SnowDown. I couldn’t come up with a better name, it’s a snowfall showdown, so put it together and that’s what you get. If you have a better name for it, then you’re just more creative than I am.

Here in the northeast it’s been pretty decent with just a trace of snow last Friday. Most of the days have been 50 + with a few days in the 80’s which is very unusual for April. With the wacky way this winter has been I’m a little nervous as to what the summer will bring across the United States. Only a handful had any snow to report this update so unless one of the cities near the top start piling it on I’ll most likely do another update early next week. If I see some of the top 10 cities are getting some snow I’ll do an update sooner.

Have a Super Week All!