First Alert Weather In-Depth: You decide – heavy wet snow or light fluffy snow?

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — For some folks, the lack of snowfall is a problem. For others, maybe you are thankful that we are not shoveling more snow.

The National Weather Service at the Rochester airport is now running close to 12 inches below normal for snowfall. The next weather event could reduce this snow deficit.

It really depends on many factors including amount of mixed precipitation or the duration of the precipitation. But another big ingredient is the actual air temperature at specific locations.

If you look at the big cities of Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, the folks in Central New York are expecting a much greater snowfall with the snow amounts dropping towards Buffalo.

Part of the reason for this significant difference is the air temperature at each location. By example, if you take just 1 inch of liquid water and then you run it through a 34 degree temperature, you would end up with maybe 4 or 5 inches of snow. But if you drop the temperature to 30 degrees, then the snow would increase to 10 inches. If you are at only 18 degrees, then the snow would stack up close to 20 inches.

So, you see it is highly dependent on how cold the temperature is at any one time in the atmosphere. But here is the question you have to ask yourself: which would I rather shovel? Five inches of heavy, slushy snow or 20 inches of light, fluffy snow?

You can decide, but I will take the light, fluffy snow every time. 

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