I Love New York Travel

Once upon a time, there was a little village in Upstate New York. This village didn’t get as much snow as other Upstate New York communities usually did, as this village was at a lower altitude and surrounded by mountains and hills that protected it from getting clobbered every winter. Still, the village did get snow, enough to make the residents happy every year. They laughed, they played, they shoveled, they sledded, they threw snowballs, they contented themselves with indoor activities like reading and blogging and cd duplication services. Yes, winter was a happy time when life slowed down a little bit (and so did the traffic).

But one year, winter didn’t show up. Oh, the residents got ONE “snowstorm” that year. It looked like this:

But it was a pitiful excuse for a snowstorm. Gee, a whopping 3 inches. And two days later, a balmy rainstorm washed it all away.

:(

Photo taken last year from the King’s Garden at Fort Ticonderoga. It’s a nice break from the dull, gray and brown, rainy January outside my window.

The weather dudes just informed us that Lake Ontario is experiencing warmer than average temperatures. Lake Ontario fuels most of the the heavy “lake effect” snow that clobbers Upstate New York every winter. When cold air from Canada hit the warm water of Ontario, a roiling stew of snow develops. Some communities close to the lake and others inland but sitting along the wind currents get hit with tons of snow. Some towns get upwards of 10 feet in one storm. That’s a good storm. I am used to this kind of weather, so anything less than a foot of snow in a day is not really a storm to me. I know, some of you folks would be so freaked out if 5 or 10 feet of snow dropped on you, that you’d have to enter a residential rehab treatment facility! But I love the snow, especially the storms. Everything shuts down, no busy traffic.. it’s so beautiful and peaceful.

But today we have gray and brown. Hardly any snow at all this year. Although, with Ontario so warm… any cold current could change things very quickly. And we still have 2.5 months of winter left…

BARELY.

This is the extent of our Upstate New York winter weather, folks. I find it quite remarkable. I hope we don’t pay for our balmy weather this spring…. !

And yes, the skies are as gloomy as the photo appears. We’ve had more November and December sun lately than I can remember in my lifetime, but this week has been a bit gloomy.