Environment

Friends of Hamlin Beach State Park to host inaugural "I Love My Park Day" event

Tuesday, May 1st, 2012, 1:50pm

The Friends of Hamlin Beach State Park will host volunteers at Hamlin Beach State Park as part of more than 20 cleanup, improvement and beautification events happening statewide on Saturday, May 5.

"I Love My Park" Day is an exciting new statewide event to improve and enhance New York's state parks and historic sites. Volunteers will celebrate the state park system by planting gardens, cleaning up park lands, and working on various site improvement projects.

About 30 volunteers are expected to participate at Hamlin Beach State Park from 9:00am to 1:00pm. The volunteers will be planting raised bed garden, installing information kiosk, clean up of flower gardens and park lands.

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U.S. Basks, Rest of the Northern Hemisphere Shivers

Submitted by Kevin Williams, Director of Meteorology

Monday, April 2nd, 2012, 5:46am

The average March temperature in Rochester was 47.3 degrees. This was a remarkable 13 degrees above average.

The average winter (December-January-February) temperature in Rochester was 32.4 degrees. This placed the winter as the fifth warmest on record. The warmest winter in Rochester history was in 1931-32 when the average temperature reached 34.5 degrees. (The only noteworthy item to cheer if you are a winter weather fan was the above normal snowfall that was observed in February.)

Additionally, this past winter nationally also turned out to be the 5th warmest on record.

You thus might be surprised to learn that globally, this winter was the 11th coldest on record in the 34 year satellite record.

This is attributable to the fact that parts of Europe and Asia were breaking records for low temperatures and heavy snow, while we in the States were basking in the glow of a low winter sun.

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A Flaky February After All

Submitted by Kevin Williams, Director of Meteorology

Thursday, March 1st, 2012, 8:44am

Meteorological winter ended at midnight last night. (Astronomical winter has about three weeks left. And, of course, Mother Nature cares little for how we define winter with accumulating snow falling here as late as May.)

Certainly no one should ever mistake the winter of 2011-12 as a harsh season in Rochester and the Finger Lakes.

And no one is likely to mistake this past February as a harsh month either.

But February was snowy. In fact, it was by far the snowiest month of the season. It was even snowier than the months of November, December and January combined.

The total Rochester snowfall for February was 27.3 inches which was 5.8 inches above normal. And since 1980, there were only 11 February’s
when more snow fell.

By the way, while the winter nationally was unusually warm and relatively storm free, that was not the case elsewhere in the northern Hemisphere.

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Winter -- better late than never...?

Submitted by Kevin Williams, Director of Meteorology

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012, 3:12pm

Here is one metric provided by the National Weather Service relative to the snow drought in Rochester, which I think is symptomatic of much of the country: In a normal winter, there are 76 days where the ground is covered be at least one inch of snow. The record for the least amount of such days is 35. So far this year there have been just 9 such days! (BTW, the record for the least amount of snowfall is 11 inches which was set in the winter of 1932-33. That record is safe.)

The other city we included in our analogue forecast for the Great Lakes was Chicago. And there certainly has been a snow drought there, as well. The total seasonal snowfall to date in Chicago stands at 13.9 inches. The normal snowfall to date is 22.9 inches and by this time last year there had been 50.1 inches of snow.

The numbers in Rochester and Chicago are consistent with what our analogue forecast suggested. So far, so good.

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Winter: The Coming Highs and Lows

Submitted by Kevin Williams, Director of Meteorology

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012, 2:05pm

The cold air coming to the Midwest and Northeast over the next 10 days will come in two or three surges with a spell of modestly milder air coming after each surge. This will result from the NAO going negative (please see our first blog in December for terminology explanations) during a developing +PNA pattern. This will allow Siberian air to cross over the North Pole, rush through Canada and then enter the United States via potent arctic fronts.

The –NAO appears likely to have resulted from the stratospheric warming event that we detailed several weeks ago. The result is going to be more typical winter conditions across the northern third of the country over the next one to two weeks, including air that is colder than normal more times than not and enhanced risks of accumulating snow. For Rochester and the Finger Lakes this means more snow and more cold than we have seen so far this winter, not that that is saying much.

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Brockport recycling firm collects 1 million pounds of electronics

Submitted by News 10NBC

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011, 3:31pm

Brockport recycling firm Sunnking Electronics Recycling recently hit the 1 million pound mark for electronics recycled throughout the state as part of its “E-Scrap Drop Off” program.

Zachary Hussion, Sunnking’s director of marketing, says the program was initiated in April to coincide with a new state law on electronics recycling.

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Save the deer for the hunters: Tips on avoiding deer-vehicle collisions

Submitted by Melissa Campbell, Edge Advertising Group

Friday, November 18th, 2011, 2:53pm

Hunters are happy to see the start of deer season, but for drivers it's a different story. According to AAA, approximately 1.6 million motor vehicle crashes are caused by deer each year.

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