Sustainable Saturday - The Fickle Finger of Weather

Binghamton, New York, has had its 15 minutes of fame, thanks to a nationwide cable channel called The Weather Channel.

My front steps, afternoon of March 2

The fickle finger of weather was about to land on our area.

I need to explain here that Binghamton (where I work) is part of an annual contest called The Golden Snowball, which is a friendly competition between five New York cities for the most snow.  We have to do something (besides swear at) with all that snow.

Here's a history of that competition.

Binghamton won last year, in part thanks to a March snowstorm that dumped over three feet (.9 m) of snow on our area.  But did the Weather Channel come in to livecast our misery?

Not that I can remember.

No, instead they showed up yesterday, as we were being hit by the edge of what we call a nor'easter.  Someone flagged me down at work and said "there's a Weather Channel guy out there!" Accompanied by a co worker, we ran outside.

Nada (he was there, but out of sight of where we could see, as it turns out). 

Around 7:30 am, this is what our downtown looked like, towards the beginning of the snow.

The snow was coming down pretty good.

The Weather Channel guy stationed himself a few hundred feet from here.

It didn't look bad at 7:30, but by the time the Weather Channel guy showed up, there was plenty for him to marvel at. He was showing all the snow clinging to these trees, and speculating about if trees would fall, as I found out later.

It's hard to see, but if you look at a yellow traffic sign in the lower right of this photo, there is a roundabout (traffic circle) right behind it, and the Weather Channel man stationed himself on the center, trying to measure snow in planters in the center of the circle.

But back to those fickle fingers...it ended up that many areas got lots more snow than we did.

And we are in next to last place in the Golden Snowball.

Not that I mind.