National Weather Service | Binghamton NY

Binghamton NY is located in Broome County, along with other nearby significant towns including; Endicott, Johnson City, Endwell, Apalachin, and Vestal. The 2020 census showed a population of 47,969 for Binghamton, with 247,000 people in the greater metropolitan area (Broome & Tioga counties). Local interstates in the area include I-81, I-86/Rte 17, and I-88. Other significant roads include Rte 201 and Rte 434, which is known as the Vestal Parkway. Traffic is usually light. Forecasting is fun and challenging with summer severe weather and then plenty of winter weather events from Nor'easters to Lake Effect snow.

There is the Catskill Mountains only a few hours to the east and the Adirondack mountains are about 4 hours to the north. The Finger Lakes is a great place to visit with plenty of hiking or biking along with scenic drives. There are many wineries to sample as well as breweries. Scranton PA is about 45 minutes to the south for all the Office fans out there.

32 Dawes Drive, Johnson City, NY 13790

The forecast office is about 8 miles up the hill from Binghamton and sits at about 1600 feet, 800 feet higher than the town itself. This results in sometimes an interesting drive as you can go from rain in the valley to snow as you get closer to the office. The office sees about 86 inches of snow per year while down in the valley the average snow is lower than 60 inches.

There are several sporting events to attend like the Rumble Ponies Baseball team or the Black Bear hockey team in downtown Binghamton!

There are plenty of Farmers Markets around. One of the larger farmers market in the area takes place right in Binghamton on Saturdays! Plenty of goods to buy from local farmers.

There are Carousels! Binghamton is known as the "Carousel Capitol of the World" with 6 antique carousels around the tri cities area that will make you feel like you have gone back in time.

Lots of golf courses and the Dick's Sporting Goods open is played in town. Below is a map of some of the local courses that are close to the office. Also there is a splattering of disc golf courses.

There are a few Breweries around town as well like Beer Tree (Several Locations-Farm, Factory, and Downtown), The North Brewery, Water Street Brewing, Crooked Mouth Brewing, and that is all just in the Tri cities area! There is plenty more options within a half hours drive.

The Southern Tier has plenty of local parks and state forest as well as a close drive to the Catskill Mountains and State Game Lands in Northeast Pennsylvania. The Finger Lakes is also home to many water falls like Watkins Glen State Park and Taughannock Falls State Park . Both have picturesque water falls and fairly short hikes that can be done in a few hours.

To get some longer hikes in, head to the Catskill mountains where there are many peaks that get over 3000 feet in elevation. A couple of the peaks like Hunter Mountain have fire towers on the top that can help see over the trees. To get above tree line, you will have to head up to the Adirondack Mountains to the high peaks where a few of the summits are over 5000 feet in elevation!

There are many rivers and lakes to get some fishing in as well. Also hunting in some of the state forest and game lands.

Fall is a great time in Upsate New York as there is bountiful colors with many different species of deciduous trees. This result in a wide range of colors as well as different times the colors change so a long fall season is common (baring any major fall storms with lots of wind or extremely unseasonably cold temperatures)!

New York has one of the most diverse fishing opportunities in all the country. Fly fishing was invented in the rivers of the Catskill Mountains, with the Delaware River being a famous fly fishing destination. The Hudson river offers a chance to target Stripers in the spring as they migrate north and spawn in the river. The Finger Lakes offer a chance to catch Largemouth and Smallmouth bass, trout, landlocked Salmon, Perch, Walleye, Pike and Musky. The Bassmasters fishing circuit has an annual stop at Cayuga Lake for Smallmouth fishing. If Salmon is your game, Lake Ontario offers opportunities to target them in deep waters offshore or along the many rivers and streams they use to spawn in during the Fall. Lake Ontario and its tributaries also offer great Smallmouth bass fishing. Central New York has several rivers that also offer wonderful wade and bank fishing with ample amounts of Smallmouth, Walleye, Trout and Pike in our waters. If you love fishing, we have something for you! 

When we are fully staffed, we have 5 Lead Forecasters and 8 General Forecasters. We operate a 5/4/9 schedule with a day shift operating from 7 AM to 4 PM, an evening shift from 2 PM to 11 PM, and finally an overnight shift from 10 PM to 7 AM. One shift a pay period will be an 8 hour shift instead of the typical 9 hour shift. The hour or 2 of overlap is great for busy weather and makes it easy to take an hour or 2 off from a shift if the weather is nice.

We usually will have 2 forecasters working in operations at any given time, 1 Lead and 1 General forecaster.

• Day Shift - Duties will be split with one of the forecasters working the Short range (days 3 to 4) and then the long term (days 5+) and then the near term (current to days 1 or 2) then TAFs. Other duties such as social media and DSS will be split up as well though how it is split up between the 2 forecasters is variable.

• Evening Shift - Duties will be split between the Grids and the TAFs. On quiet nights one of the forecasters may take both the grids and the TAFs allowing the other forecaster to have a shift to focus on training or projects.

• Night Shift - Spilt similar to the Day Shift with the duties split with one forecaster taking the near term and TAFs with the other forecaster doing the short and long term forecast. The forecaster working the short and long will usually be tasked with DSS and social media and create the weather story or any briefings that need to be done.

X shifts - These are our designated supernumerary shifts. If the weather is quiet then the hours are flexible and training or projects can be worked on but if the weather is active than X shifts will many times will help out in operations.

We have 6 TAF sites that we forecast for. With the terrain and Great Lakes, can make for some challenging TAFs especially in the winter. The summer time and early fall, deep river valley fog will form most nights and clear in the early morning hours.

• BGM - This is the airport next to the office. Being at 1600 feet, there are many times that the ceilings will be lower than any of the surrounding TAF sites.

• ELM - This airport is located along the Chemung river and most commonly fogs in during the mid to late summer through the fall season.

• ITH - The Ithaca airport is also at higher elevation and is near Cayuga lake up about 800 feet above the lake elevation. Lake effect snow or low stratus developing off of the Finger Lake when the wind direction is lined up with the fetch of the lake can result in local restrictions.

• SYR - One of the busier airports we forecast for. Lake effect snow bands can frequently impact the terminal during the winter months but rarely fogs in the summer time.

• RME - This airport is located about 30 miles east of Syracuse, will see a little more fog in the summer and fall and will frequently be impacted by lake effect snow in the winter.

• AVP - This is our only airport in Northeast Pennsylvania that we forecast for. It is located in the Wyoming valley between Scranton and Wilkes Barre. Thanks to the Pocono mountains to the Southeast of the airport, far from the Great Lakes, and located a few hundred feet off of the valley floor, this site has some of the fewest restrictions.

Being in the interior Northeast between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic coast, we get a wide variety of weather. Winter is usually our busiest season though every now and then we will get an active summer pattern with frequent thunderstorms.

Winter

With winter being the busiest season (also cloudiest), may as well start with it. We get frequent storms, most of the time they are clipper systems bringing widespread snow showers and minor accumulations. Once the clippers move through, the cold air advection will lead to lake effect snow showers that persist as long as Northwest flow does. Here at the office we average 1.5 foot plus snow storms a year. As far as annual snowfall goes in our CWA, areas along the Southern Tug hill like Booneville will see close to 200 inches of snow a year to around 30 inches in the lower valleys of Northeast Pennsylvania. Snow Squalls are frequent as well with the passage of strong arctic fronts. Of course the most exciting winter storms here are Nor'easters! There will usually be a few Nor'easters per year that impact our CWA. A track along the coast is most favorable for our CWA to see the most snow and least amount of mixing. Inland tracks will make for a challenge as we will be seeing a mix or even rain especially in our eastern and southeastern zones. Every few years we will get a pivoting snow band in our CWA during a Nor'easter and that is when we can see storm totals getting over 2 feet!

The least exiting weather (if you like snow) is storms that take a track well inland and move through the Great Lakes putting us in the warm sector. Many times these storms will have a brief period of heavy snow as the warm front lifts in but will quickly transition to a wintery mix or even rain. If we have a deep snow pack or just got through an extended period of cold weather, river flooding and ice jam flooding is something we will have to deal with if there is a rain on snow event.

Summer

Summers in this area are pleasant with highs mostly in the upper 70s and low 80s. We don't get too humid with dew points rarely getting over 65 degrees. During the middle of summer once all the plants are fully leafed out, we get frequent air mass thunderstorms.

We will get about a dozen or so days per year in which we are under a marginal risk. We do get a slight risk now and then and rarely get into an enhanced risk. Given our cloudy environment it is hard to get very high CAPE values but a few times per year an elevated mixed layer is able to make it far enough east and give us a busy day. Nocturnal thunderstorms are rare with the mid to late afternoon being the most common times for severe storms.

Flash flooding is likely the most common and impactful summer weather that we get on a regular basis. Terrain is very hilly across our CWA and overall soils are shallow so it does not take much rain to result in localized flash flooding. Even on days with just air mass thunderstorms, if the flow is weak storms may not move much and could result in some minor problems.

Remnant Tropical Lows - The remnants of Irene and Lee brought some of the most devastating flooding to our major rivers that we have seen. Agnes in 1972 brought the worst flooding to Wilkes Barre. Even recently there was major flash flooding from the remnants of tropical storm Fred in 2021. If the center of the remnant low can hold together, there is also a tornado risk we can see if we are in the Northeast quadrant of the low.

Spring

Springs can be finicky in this region. It is common to see snow well into spring with even a few instances of accumulating snow into May. On the flip side, if a strong ridge sets up, we can get temperatures into the 60s and 70s. Early season squall lines can bring significant impacts as we typically can see one or two instances a spring with high shear but low CAPE. Many times these lines can contain 60+ mph wind gusts all while the associated showers are not producing lightning. We can also see impactful Nor'easters such as the March 1993 superstorm as well as the March 2017 storm, where both these storms brought 2 to 4 feet of snow across a large area.

Towards the end of spring, severe weather becomes more common as we begin to get more days with greater amounts of CAPE coupled with shear. Our Fire Weather season is also in the spring lasting from after the snow pack melts to when green up occurs. There are usually many prescribed burns during this time so spot forecast are commonly done.

Fall

Fall is one of the better seasons here in the interior northeast. We will still get some remnant tropical systems into early October that can cause river flooding. Severe weather is really winding down as the colors change and we begin to see lower dew points and less days with cape. Snow is not very common in the fall season though does happen from time to time if we get an early season Nor'easter or a cold clipper. Snow showers are not too uncommon as we can get some early season cold fronts lead to some lake effect snow, mainly in Mid October into November. There is even a brief fire season when the trees lose their leaves with still a few warm, sunny days possible in October and early November.