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Ithaca area far from normal snowfall totals, forecasters say

Snowfall density in the Northeast area during winter storm Jonas. Courtesy of WENY-TV and the National Weather Service. Photo: WHCU


ITHACA — Weather forecasters say so far this winter, the Ithaca area hasn’t gotten nearly as much snowfall as it’s used to.

Many storms over the past few months, including one that recently buried cities as close as New York under several feet of snow, have missed our area completely.

WENY-TV meteorologist Joe Veres says a combination of weather patterns have caused these storms to miss Ithaca.

“All that storms that have been tracking across the southern part of the country have been hooking up through the Great Lakes area, and when that happens, it puts us on the milder side of the storm,” he said. “That means a lot of our storms were rain instead of snow, with temperatures exceptionally warm.”

Veres says that means snow totals are far below normal this year.

“For Ithaca and Cornell, there’s just a little over eight inches of snow so far this winter,” he said. “Typically by this point in the winter, we would have picked up 33.6 inches of snow, so we’re well shy of that by about two feet with all those mild temperatures in place back in December.”

But Veres says if patterns change, including more cold air coming down from the north, we could still see more snow in the area.

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