Ya know, I've been scratching my head...

Written by: Bob Metcalfe

Okay folks, I really have been noticing a striking pattern the past several weekends, extending back about 5 or 6 weeks. I first started discussing it last evening with our summer intern Chris, and we both agreed that storms have been "dodging" Rochester lately. Now as meteorologists, we love weather "action", otherwise we wouldn't be in this profession. But I've consistently seen promising lines of storms just disappear, die out, or dodge the Flower (Flour) City quite consistently as of late.

So I did some number crunching. Here are the results of rain fall from July thus far and June from cities close to here. They more or less experience "similar" weather and often share the same weather systems with us. The first number is July's total rainfall, second is June's, and third is the total rainfall:



Cleveland, OH- 2.53"/5.21"/7.74"
Pittsburgh, PA- 0.99"/6.17"/ 7.16"
Erie, PA- 1.84"/4.33"/ 6.17"
Detroit, MI- 2.44"/ 4.05"/ 6.49"
Buffalo, NY- 0.71"/4.91"/ 5.62"
Syracuse, NY- 0.54"/ 3.75"/ 4.29"

Rochester, NY- 0.38"/ 2.59"- 2.97!!!

That's a HUGE difference! There you have it! The proof is in the puddin'... Mother Nature really does have a thing for making our jobs difficult here in Rochester! Those "Great Lakes" sure make our lives more interesting from a forecasting perspective. I think it is striking that Buffalo, just a short 50 miles west of us has almost had double the rain we have in the past month and a half. If that ain't tricky... I'm not quite sure what is! This may just be worth investigating further to figure out why, possibly a blog post soon to come???