I was looking at a typical 10-day forecast today while procrastinating on this blog post and decided I would talk about this topic a bit more since there is a lot of misinformation. I pulled up this quote from a prospective student regarding his thoughts on coming to Syracuse. “Cons: The city of Syracuse is cold as hell.”

I don’t think Syracuse is actually colder than any other Northeast city, speaking from my Massachusetts/New England bias. If you do some hunting, which I can spare you here, Syracuse tends to be 10 degrees colder than New York City on average during the winter months. However, I don’t think most people are afraid of the cold, but rather the snow. The quick version is that it snows here, sometimes a lot. I was a senior at Syracuse for the 2010-2011 winter where Syracuse accumulated 179 inches of snow. This also happened to keep a quite impressive streak of “Golden Snowball” victories intact for Syracuse.

I know what you are thinking, “how did you live? You must be amazing!” Well, not quite. There was a lot of snow, but it really doesn’t effect much of your daily life. If I had to go grocery shopping, I went. If I had to go to class, I went (or as much as any undergard can hope to). Syracuse is a world-class snow plowing machine! Besides, there is always the off chance that you can have a snow day!

Ultimately, weather will probably be low on most students’ lists for graduate school. It also provides an instant talking point with anyone. “I went to Syracuse.” “Oh wow it is so snowy up there I’m going to give you this job right now!” It most likely won’t go like that, but there is always a chance. As always, please contact me if you have any questions or comments!