As of 9:30 this morning SUNY Oswego has cancelled all afternoon classes due to inclement weather.  This entails all classes that begin at or after noon anywhere on the SUNY Oswego campus.

Heavy snowfall and blowing snow combined with frigid temperatures have prompted the school to take this action. Safety is the main concern for students and faculty as they head from building to building for class, as well as for those faculty and students who commute to the campus.

Visibility is limited and walkways are barely identifiable all across campus and Oswego as a whole.  Campus officials are making efforts to clear the snow as quickly as possible, but with some reservation, as to protect themselves and students in the low visibility conditions.

The National Weather Service is calling for a 100% chance for Lake Effect Snow all across Oswego and has issued warnings out all across Central New York.  The snow is expected to continue into tonight with a slight tapering off in the later evening.  Accumulation is expected to reach 3-5 inches, and temperatures are ranging from, 5-10 degrees.  With winds out of the Southwest at 10 to 15 mph and gusts up to 30 mph the temperature feels more like a frigid -3 degrees.

Take a look at what walking around campus is really like with this short clip.

Walk Around SUNY Oswego

New York State passed a law banning plastic bags on March 1st of this year. However, the state will not begin implementing fines on retailers until at least April 1st. Most stores are switching to paper bags, but these tend to come at a charge because they are more expensive than the previously used single-use plastic bags. 

Bosco’s manager. Theresa Himes, says the local grocery store has also began selling reusable bags to customers  “We discontinued the plastic ones. We’re using paper bags for some people that don’t have the reusable or don’t want to purchase them.”  

Customers are encouraged to bring their own bags when shopping, to not only reduce waste but money, as well. If anyone is in need of any reusable bags, they can stop by City Hall to pick some up for free.

Winter may not be over yet, but just by looking around you would think it ended weeks ago. The few signs that remain of winter slowly melted away last week as temperatures soared into the 40’s. According to Dr. Scott Steiger the local co-op observer for the National Weather Service, we’ve only received forty-nine point one inches of snow as of February 29th.

An alarming seven feet below the average snowfall for this time of year. Though it’s not surprising that we’ve seen so little snowfall, through the winter months Oswego ran 2.9 degrees above average temperature-wise. January saw the worst of the effects of the warm winter at an amazing 6 degrees above average.

Students, either way, have taken advantage of the spring-like conditions and have used the time to spend their days outside. While others were left waiting for the snow that never came like Florida native Bruno Rojas. Bruno had this to say about the past winter in Oswego “There weren’t that many lake effect events in Oswego so you never really got to see…big snow storms, where you could just sit down you know in the snow and just kind of watch the really big snowflakes kind of fall really gracefully. ”

Many have expressed similar views, asking constantly where was winter this year? The answer? There was a strong Arctic Oscillation or AO, that was in its positive phase. When it’s in a positive phase we oftentimes see a lot of the cold air trapped up in Canada. It’s when it enters its negative phase that it starts to allow the colder air to funnel down into the United States. and that’s what allows for those cold Oswego winters that we all know.

While this was certainly an anomalous winter, it is part of a longer-term trend of winter warming across upstate New York. The trend becomes obvious on this chart from climate central, showing how Syracuse’s average winter temperatures have warmed 2.8° since 1970. While this chart is only for Syracuse, the changes can be seen all across New York as our climate continues to change.