Worker attaches tow cable to snow-bound Centro bus.
/ Craig McDowell/CNYcentral
SYRACUSE -- Dozens of school districts and other organizations called in to CNY Central all day Monday to delay or cancel classes because of a lake effect snow that fell on our area overnight. In fact, the National Weather Service has extended its lake effect snow warning until 6:00 a.m. Tuesday.
The Onondaga County Emergency Communications Center tells CNY Central it has been very busy handling all the calls for accidents due to the weather. The snow has created some tricky driving conditions and caused a number of vehicles to slide off area roads or into each other. Among them was a Centro bus on Pond Street near Park Street in Syracuse Monday morning. There were several accidents reported across Central New York Monday, and many in Oswego County over the weekend.
The New York State Department of Transportation has 200 people plowing the roads. The crews did practice runs in November and are now working twelve hour shifts.
Gene Cilento from the DOT says the routes are designed so the plow drivers can hit a spot every 2 1/2-3 hours. DOT workers are keeping a close eye on teh highways from the Regional Transportation Management Center. They monitor 25 cameras all the time.
The DOT has a website to help drivers check the conditions of roads. Click here, go to "Traffic Conditions," then go to "Winter Travel Advisory."
Meteorologist Peter Hall says over the past 12-24 hours lake effect snow has piled up between 6-12" roughly across chunks of Central New York in the heaviest areas. Since this is our first real bout of winter driving conditions, be extra careful as you may not be used to the very slick and slippery conditions. We are not done with lake effect snow. More snow showers, squalls and lighter snow showers will continue throughout the area today and tonight. Most areas should pick up an additional 1-3" of snow. Many areas southeast of Lake Ontario should receive an additional 3-6" of snow by 5:00 p.m. Some isolated areas southeast of Lake Ontario could receive more than 6" between 5:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. today. See the snowfall forecast map here for exact details. Winds pick up NW to 15-25 MPH with higher gusts late morning through this afternoon. Wind chills in the teens throughout the day.
You can also expect some form of lake effect snow to continue throughout much of the week. Lighter lake effect snow showers and flurries or imbedded heavier squalls will be in and around the area through midday Thursday with additional accumulations likely each day and night. Exact accumulations will be driven by the persistence of any heavier activity in any one area and whether or not the lake snow bands are connected to Georgian Bay moisture, especially Tuesday night and Wednesday night again when there could be some hefty amounts during those time periods.
Click here to follow Peter Hall's Twitter site which has snow tallies and three snow forecasts.
Click here for your full forecast.
Meanwhile, the snow for the winter of 2010-11 has been a bit slow in getting here. Here's what meteorologist Matt Stevens had to say about that this weekend:
Many folks have mentioned to me, especially here in the Syracuse area: “When are we going to finally get some real snow?” This is a pretty legitimate question, given the fact that until Saturday, we hadn’t received an inch of daily snowfall at the Syracuse Hancock airport in 280 days. This streak started back on February 27th, as the last time we received at least an inch of snow was February 26th of this year.
Had this streak continued for seven more days of no 1” snow days at the airport, we would have challenged the old record of 287 days. We set that record last year, starting on February 25th and ending on December 8th.
We officially picked up 1.1” at the airport Saturday, bringing our total snowfall this snowfall season up to 3.4” through Saturday. This is over 10” below normal for this time of the year! Most snow enthusiasts, including this author, aren’t worried though. We have plenty of lake-effect and lake-enhanced snow in the forecast over the next five days.
Speaking of which, don’t forget to check out our Interactive Doppler Radar right here on CNYcentral.com so you can track those snow bands right down to street-level mapping.
