Technology education major Mike Beshures ’13 makes the most of Oswego’s trademark winds in October. As Superstorm Sandy developed, gusts peaked at 55 mph on campus and large Lake Ontario waves rolled ashore, but the area was spared the damage.

“They’re local, so their forecasts are a little more accurate, a little more specific,“ Jamerson said. “They are really good at pinpointing the very time a storm will go through. Like we’ll be thinking of dismissing at noon, but they’ll say, ‘No. It will be worse at noon than at your regular dismissal time.’”

The student-staffed Lake Effect Storm Prediction and Research Center opens for business at 4 a.m., serving mostly school districts from November through March.

Ten meteorology students run the Lake Effect Storm Prediction and Research Center. They use what they’re being taught in the college’s meteorology department and the latest weather models on sophisticated computer software to forecast what is going to happen in Oswego hour by hour for the next day.

From this information, superintendents and transportation supervisors can decide whether they should open schools on time, later than normal or close for the day.

Working out of Oswego’s meteorology lab in Hewitt Union, the Lake Effect Storm Prediction and Research Center opens for business at 4 a.m., when the student meteorologist on call checks the equipment to see if anything mean-looking is heading across Lake Ontario.

“Lake effect snow is very unpredictable — it’s a challenge,” said student Ben Noll ’13. “We utilize forecast models that don’t always put the (lake effect) bands in the right place.”

“We have to learn more about all the different models so we can better anticipate where the snow bands will go, “ said Jordan Rabinowitz ’13.

The Lake Effect Storm Prediction and Research Center was the brainchild of Scott Steiger ’99, an associate professor of meteorology at Oswego. He oversees the development and operations of the center, including recruiting students to do forecasting, leading planning meetings, developing research goals and scheduling forecasters. The number of student participants varies depending on current research objectives and the number of forecast clients.

So far this year, the Oswego City School District and Oswego County BOCES have contracts with the center, which began about five years ago. Others may sign up as the season progresses. Districts pay $400 a month, money that’s used to buy equipment.

“I thought it would be a big help to school districts and others to get personalized forecasts and have a meteorologist they can call at any time, “ Steiger said. “And this is a great opportunity for the students to apply what they learned.”

Robert Peters, Liverpool school district transportation director, said Liverpool used the center a few years ago, but doesn’t now. He said the
students’ forecasts were accurate
and helpful.

“We could find out what they think, is a storm coming our way, “ Peters said. “They’d provide us with information regarding storms that we were able to use to keep the kids safe.”

Brian Donegan ’13 and Tara Heck ’13 direct the center. “We do forecasts for the schools, we update forecasts throughout the day and we’re on call 24 hours a day seven days a week, “ Donegan said. “We also update our website at 4 a.m., 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
each day.

“The most difficult thing about forecasting lake effect storms is their isolated nature,“ Donegan said. “It completely depends on the wind direction about a mile above the ground as to where the band will set up. Once that wind direction shifts, it shifts the band, so you really have to pay attention to the wind direction.”

The center’s service for school districts runs the winter season, Nov. 1 through the end of March.

— Debra J. Groom
Syracuse Post-Standard

Paul Cardinali ’65 looks out the front window of his residence, observing the afternoon’s snowfall.

“When I go to the Cape, I want hurricane force winds, high surf and rain,” Paul says. Spoken like a weather watcher whose earliest inclement memories include playing in the remnants of Hurricane Hazel in the mid-1950s.

With personal weather records that date back to 1958, Paul has been observing weather from his Fulton home and sharing his snowy findings with Central New York media outlets for the better part of five decades. The retired high school earth sciences teacher of 34 years even developed his own computer program to track the snow measurements.

“I’ve been pulled out of snow banks several times in my endeavors,” he says of the days he and Chrystal spent chasing storms with late Professor Emeritus Bob Sykes while studying earth sciences at Oswego.

“A little older and wiser,” the couple lets the storms come to them now, says Paul.

“When I see a big storm is coming, I want it,” he says. “But, I don’t want to shovel it off the roof — the excitement is still there though.”

He and his fellow Central New Yorkers are certainly in the right place for weather.

“Anyone who has lived since 1960 has seen some of the best and worst of the weather that we’ve had in 150 years,” says Paul, who has analyzed data going back to the 1830s. Some of the worst events in his memory occurred during the winters of 1966, 1974 and 2003.

Alumni who were on campus in the years 1958, 1966, 1978 and 1993 will never forget how Oswego made headlines around the country and across the globe for the feet of snow that piled up in a matter of hours.

Judy Driscoll Skillen ’61 recalled the snowstorm that greeted students returning from the 1958 Thanksgiving Break. “I was living in Johnson at the time,” she said. “We never went to school that whole week. They airlifted in food.” Other grads tell stories of climbing out second story windows and walking on the tops of cars.

Oswego’s “Big Snow” of 1958 dropped nearly six feet of snow in five days and inspired the late Dr. Maurice O. Boyd, who directed the Symphonic Choir, to pen “Oswego Is Famous For Its Snow.”

The January Intercession of 1966 marked another massive storm.

The Blizzard of ’66, which saw 103 inches fall from Jan. 27 to 31, caused a bit of cabin fever, too. Linda Peters ’66, an Arethusa sister, recalled, ”We got so bored we got some chalk and played hopscotch in the hall.”

The snowfall of 1978 caused Oswego to become the butt of jokes for several nights on “The Johnny Carson Show,” and Carson even showed photos of the famous “snow bar” erected by students on West Fifth Street.

Grads who were on campus in 2004 and 2007 have vivid memories of monumental snowfalls too. From Jan. 26 to 30, 2004, 53.7 inches fell in just 113 hours, causing 966 classes to be cancelled. In February 2007, 72 inches of snow fell over seven days. Oswego was under a state of emergency with classes canceled for three days. The city received mention in The New York Times and alumni from as far away as Asia repored seeing news of Oswego’s blizzard.

Whatever era they graduated, Lakers will always be able to say with first hand knowledge that, “Oswego is famous for its snow.”

The sight of the sun dropping just below the shimmering horizon has captivated most who cast their eyes upon it. Sunsets are perhaps Oswego’s most universally loved features.

“I will never forget it until the day I die,” Deb Roe ’73 told the late historian and Professor Emerita Dorothy Rogers. “We were all on the west campus on the bluff watching this particularly beautiful sunset.

“When the last bit of sun had sunk below the horizon, one person — God knows who — began to clap and the whole group, a couple of hundred people, stood up and applauded the sunset,” she recalled.

John Gerard ’79 was equally enamored with the sunsets as a meteorology major at the college.

“We’d plan our Friday nights around it,” the chief meteorologist for News 4 WOAI-TV in San Antonio, Texas, said. After spending his 30-plus-year career in such places as Chicago, Toronto and Miami, he counts the Oswego sunsets among the most beautiful.

“My scientific explanation is simply: ‘Gee. Wow,” Gerard said with a laugh. In reality, “it’s a combination of western exposure, the clouds and the fact that you’re far enough north to get away from the haze.”

Jet streaks — bursts of stronger winds in the jet stream that cause high, thin clouds — intensify the array of oranges, reds and purples. Add that to the unobstructed view provided by Lake Ontario, and you’ve got an applause-worthy phenomenon that has captivated generations.