Syracuse has kept daily snowfall records since before the interstate came through, and 76 seasons of them answer the question the region asks every October: when does it start.
The median date of the first measurable snowfall, meaning a tenth of an inch or more, is November 7. Half of all seasons since 1950 reached that mark earlier, half later.
The spread around that median is wide. The earliest first snow in the record came on October 2, 1974. The latest held off until December 11, 1998, a gap of ten weeks between the two extremes.
This story came from public records we pulled ourselves
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Measured against the calendar rather than the median, snow by Halloween is the exception. Only 31.6 percent of seasons recorded measurable snow by October 31. By November 15 the figure reaches 81.6 percent, and by the end of November it is near universal.
The start is drifting later
Grouped by decade, the first snowfall has moved back across the record. In the 1960s and 1970s the average first measurable snow landed on October 31 and October 30. In the 2010s it was November 9, and across the six completed seasons of the 2020s it is November 11.
That is a shift of about 10.6 days between the 1960s and the 2020s. The pattern is not a straight line, and the 1980s ran later than the 1970s, but the two most recent decades are the two latest in the record.
A later start is not a smaller winter
The date of the first flake says little about the total. Syracuse averages 115.3 inches of snow a season across the full record, and the last several winters have swung hard around that number.
The 2023 to 2024 season finished at 60.8 inches, a little over half of normal. The following season recorded 115.4 inches, almost exactly average. The season after that reached 143.1 inches, well above it. Three consecutive winters covered nearly the entire plausible range.
The snowiest season in the record remains 1992 to 1993 at 192.1 inches, with 2000 to 2001 close behind at 191.9 inches.
The last ten first snows
Recent seasons show the spread in miniature. The first measurable snow arrived October 27 in 2016, and then on November 10 in 2017, November 10 in 2018, November 7 in 2019 and November 2 in 2020. It slipped to November 16 in 2021, November 13 in 2022, November 1 in 2023 and November 22 in 2024, the latest of the ten, before returning to November 10 in 2025.
Only one of the last ten seasons saw measurable snow before Halloween, which fits the long run figure of roughly one season in three.
Big winters and small ones
The record’s extremes are far apart. Beyond the 192.1 inches of 1992 to 1993, the list of heavy winters includes 181.3 inches in 2003 to 2004, 179.0 inches in 2010 to 2011 and 170.9 inches in 1995 to 1996.
At the other end, the lightest season on record is 2011 to 2012 at 50.6 inches, followed by 2001 to 2002 at 59.4 inches and 2023 to 2024 at 60.8 inches. The median season total is 115.2 inches, close to the mean, which means the heavy and light winters roughly balance rather than one tail pulling the average.
A note on the measure: these counts use the National Weather Service threshold of a tenth of an inch for measurable snow. Flurries that melt on contact are logged as a trace and do not start the clock, which is why the first snow a resident remembers seeing often predates the first snow in the record.
What that means for this autumn
History gives early November as the moment to have the snow tires on and the roof rake found, with roughly a one in three chance of seeing something measurable before Halloween. It gives no guidance at all on how deep the winter will go, because the record shows the first snow date and the season total move independently.
Sources
- NOAA Regional Climate Centers, Applied Climate Information System, daily records for the Syracuse Area threaded station, July 1950 through October 5, 2026.
Averages, percentage changes, medians and per gallon and per tank figures in this article were calculated by CNY Signal from the primary records cited above.
