Was it a dark and stormy night?  On October 28, 1981 5.08 inches of rain set an Ithaca record for the highest precipitation in a day.  That handily beat the previous record of 4.60 inches set in 1935.  But you might say it was easier to take than the record setting 26 inches of snow that fell on February 14, 1914, a day that still holds the Ithaca record for the most snow to fall in a day.  It was The 15th of another February in 1942 that another snow record was set: that was the day that saw the highest daily snow depth of 40 inches.

Ithaca weather record keeping has been going on since 1893, so we don't really know the exact conditions before that.  But it was 100 years before that Ithaca got its name when surveyor Simeon DeWitt moved here.  That was better than prior names such as 'The City' and 'Sodom.'

You might have posited devine wrath on the city of Sodom on July 9th, 1936, when the all-time high of 103 degrees farenheight was recorded in the city.  The next day Ithaca felt some relief when the temperature plummeted to 102 degrees.  And the day before, July 8th, it was a positively frigid 101!  Five years earlier, on September 12, 1931 the previous record of 100 degrees was set.

On the other end of the temperature spectrum, the record for lowest tempreture of  minus 13.5, originally set February 9, 1934, was tied on February 18, 1979.  That trumped the next lowest temperature of -10 degrees, which Ithaca suffered on January 22, 2005 and January 20, 1994.  All in all, when Ithacans complain about the gray, moderate weather, we know it isn't so bad.  

Most of the time, that is!