Coming off a record warm January, basically across the entire U.S., February arrived with force. A breezy storm that brought some rain to Central New York lifted up into Canada on the weekend of 4th. As winds whipped around to the southwest and west behind it, cold air was dragged into the Eastern U.S. As a result of the warm January, none of the Great Lakes had frozen, and were actually quite mild. With very chilly air pouring in over those relatively milder lakes, the recipe was set for a significant lake effect snow event. Initially, the lake effect got going on Sunday night the 5th, very late across the far North Country. By Monday morning, nearly 3 feet of snow had already fallen across parts of northern Lewis and Jefferson Counties! Snowfall rates were anywhere from 2-4 inches per hour, with some areas even recording 4.5 to 5 inch per hour rates! The single band became very well organized, and at one point stretched from Lake Huron, down across the entire length of Lake Ontario and all the way back up into far interior Quebec! With winds and a number of other factors forecast by our computer models to make a decided shift south into Central New York, it was becoming a concern that we may get a healthy shot of snow. Fortunately or unfortunately, that just never materialized, as a few subtle factors prevented a really vigorous lake effect band from developing over us, as our computer models had indicated would earlier in the day. Regardless, some locations did quite well from this event. On the days after a few more bouts of lake effect were felt with varying snowfall totals from place to place. The following are totals from just the Sunday-Tuesday (2/5-2/7) event. A special thanks to our SkyWatchers and National Weather Service Public Info. Statements for these numbers! All of these totals are final unless otherwise noted. Totals on the map are a rough representation of what fell, and may have a few totals omitted that were incomplete.

Snow Totals
February 5-7, 2006