[span class="news_story_title"]Upstate New York May Get Another Four Feet of Snow (Update1) [/span]
By Chris Dolmetsch[/p] Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Upstate New York, socked with nearly 8 feet of snow this week, may get as much as 4 more feet in the next three days as ``lake-effect'' snow continues to bury the region. [/p] The heaviest snowfall has been in Parish, a town in Oswego County off Lake Ontario about 143 miles (251 kilometers) east- northeast of Buffalo, where 94 inches of snow has fallen in the past week, according to the U.S. National Weather Service's Buffalo forecast office. [/p] Governor Eliot Spitzer yesterday declared a disaster emergency for Oswego County and adjoining areas because the snows have disrupted public transit and health and safety services. The order allows state agencies to help county personnel. [/p] The unrelenting snowfall is ``certainly a rare event but it's by no means historic,'' weather service forecaster Jon Hitchcock said in a telephone interview. ``The area east of Lake Ontario is infamous for its lake-effect snows, and once every couple of years, they get an event of this magnitude.'' [/p] Lake-effect snow is caused by frigid air, some of it colder than 10 degrees Fahrenheit, passing over Lake Ontario, where the water temperature off Rochester is about 34 degrees, Hitchock said. Heat and moisture from the lake rise into the arctic air, cooling and condensing into snow clouds. [/p] ``The bigger the difference between the water temperature and the air temperature, the more intense the lake-effect snow will be,'' Hitchcock said. [/p] The snowfall ``has lightened up considerably this morning,'' yet the lull is temporary and as much as 5 inches may fall on Oswego County by tonight, the weather service said in a forecast. Heavy lake-effect snow is likely to continue through the night and into next week, with as much 4 inches of snow falling per hour and another four feet possible by Feb. 12. [/p] West Monroe, a town about 9 miles to the south of Parish, has about 4.5 feet of snow on the ground and about 16 inches fell between last night and this morning, according to the weather service. [/p] There have been no reports of serious accidents or serious injuries in Oswego County, and all county and state roads remain open although the Oswego County Airport in Fulton has been closed, county legislature chairman Russ Johnson said in a statement. [/p] At Snow Ridge Ski Resort in neighboring Lewis County, which bills itself as having the heaviest snowfall in the East, about 74 inches have fallen in the past week, matching some of the resort's biggest storms, said Judy Sweeney, who runs the business office. [/p] ``It's comparable to some of them, no doubt about that,'' Sweeney said. ``There's been years where we've gotten 75-80 inches in a shot. We're getting busier. We're getting calls from people in areas that normally don't come here because we do have the snow.'' [/p]
