Hello Oswego, and welcome to the Spring 2017 semester!
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Matt Seymour, a sophomore meteorology major here at SUNY Oswego. Some may know me as the “Sassy Weatherman.” (plug: follow my Twitter @SassyWeatherman and you’ll eventually figure out why). I am active in the school’s meteorology club, and I enjoy being outdoors and taking photographs.
And what a start it has been to the semester, weather-wise. Two significant lake effect snow events have occurred in the past two weeks. Neither produced huge snow accumulation in Oswego, but the Tug Hill Plateau (northeast of Oswego) has been hammered. Redfield, NY, a small town on the southern Tug Hill, has picked up 120″ (10 FEET) of snow since January 26. Videos have been posted of people literally jumping into the snow and being buried head to toe instantly. Now that’s some powder!!!
Here in Oswego, we have been missed by the majority of these snows. I’d estimate that campus has picked up around 20-25″ of snow in that same timeframe. Why’s this? Blame the lake effect. A single band of lake effect snow often isn’t more than a few miles wide, so it is capable of highly localized snowfall. It literally could be sunny in one location, and then a mile down the road it’s snowing and blowing with drifts waist deep. In a nutshell, this is what happened to Oswego during this past week. The snow band set up (on several occasions) just to the north or south of campus. Locations on either side picked up 2-4 times as much snow as campus. However, when it did snow here, it came down fast and furious. There were even two instances of thundersnow! (For those who keep track, we have now had 8 instances of thundersnow this winter in Oswego.)
This week, a mid-week warm up looks to bring rain, wind, mild temps and melting snow. Lake effect is once again possible Thursday. Will it hit campus, that remains to be seen. Regardless, have a great week all!!!