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If you’re reading this, it’s quite likely you have made a percipient decision to attend a top school with a brilliant and collaborative research environment and a plethora of programs to choose from. However, you’ve also chosen to live in area with an colder-than-average climate. Winters in Rochester may seem intimidating at first, but best not to judge a book by its cover, as there’s still ways to keep up the holiday spirit – ranging from all the winter sports you can think of to cozy indoor spots you tend to miss out on during the warm summers!

Rochester lies in the humid continental climate zone of the northern hemisphere. This means you get to see the beauty of all four seasons with sunny and warm (getting warmer!) summers and winters that are cold, snowy and overcast. Rochester has a reputation of a harsh winters originating from intense bouts of localized lake effect snow and chilly Canadian winds blowing down South across Lake Ontario into the greater Rochester area. In a nutshell, it gets cold, especially if you are used to a warm climate! Shortly after Thanksgiving in November, temperatures start dropping to freezing point. Temperatures in winter drop the most during the months of January and February where the average hovers below freezing point, as low as 20°F ( -8°C). Hence, winters in Rochester officially start in December and may stetch into April depending on the severity. Now looking at the bright side, these frosty few months ensure Rochester is layered in a sheet of sparkling white snow for a majority of the winter. Another brownie point is that snowfall in Rochester remains snow instead of melting into muddy slush (which no one enjoys), due to the constant below freezing temperatures and it being a smaller city with less pollution.

Trust me, once you see a 6-inch-thick quilt of snow in your backyard, there’s just a natural urge to dive in and start making a snowman or a snow angel. A fun activity we enjoy in my neighbourhood is choose a day with peak snowfall, usually in January and have a snow sculpture competition. Last year, I ended making a pretty impressive snow castle! Within the city of Rochester, make sure to explore the parks across Monroe County. My personal favourites include Highland, Ellison, Cobb’s Hill, Corbett’s Glen, Genessee Valley and Mendon Ponds Park (the largest park in Monroe County). These places are perfect for a winter walk or trek with some parks converting summer hiking trails into sledding lanes for extra frosty fun! Mendon Ponds Park is highly recommended for the winters as it is home to unique glacial features like kames, eskers and kettles formed during the melting of a giant ice sheet ~12,000 years ago. Even a peaceful walk in Mt. Hope Cemetery, adjacent to the University, can be so soothing when covered in snow. Another fun winter activity to try out is ice skating. Ice hockey is pretty popular in upstate NY, and there’s quite a few indoor hockey arenas where you can go practice ice skating or even hockey if you’re interested. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park (a.k.a. Manhattan Square Park) is transformed into an outdoor skating rink from late November to early March with affordable skate rental fees. This skating rink and downtown Rochester get especially lively during the ROC Holiday Village-- spanning three weeks in December--with a ton of festive food and celebratory events!

If you’re a slightly more adventurous or athletic soul, you’d definitely appreciate the vast variety of snow sports accessible in and around Rochester. For skiing and snowboarding enthusiasts, Bristol Mountain, Hunt Hollow Ski Club and Swain Ski Resort are all short drives from the city and offer more than 30 freestyle trails each. You’d find trails for every age and ability as well as the option for renting ski or snowboarding gear.  Apart from these sports, there’s many snow-filled trails for sledding, snow tubing and snowshoeing, some other highly recommended outdoor winter activities. Head over to Black Creek, Mendon Ponds or Cobb’s Hill with friends for the best sledding slopes or try out Greystone Tubing Walworth or Holiday Valley Ellicottville for an intense snow tubing experience! Manny of these places have winter trails for avid hiking enthusiasts undeterred by the frosty winds. Even the fall season go-to, Letchworth State Park, boasts numerous snow trekking and snowshoeing trails with gorgeous views of the frozen waterfalls, icicles and the highly reputed ‘ice volcano’.

Not everyone enjoys embracing the snow, and that’s absolutely fine. Fortunately, Rochester is home to several spots attending to a wide variety of interests where you can catch a break, relax and take your mind off work for a bit. Many students and locals enjoy hitting up the cultural, historical and artistic attractions within the city including the Strong Museum of Play, Memorial Art Gallery (MAG), ArtisanWorks, Rochester Museum and Science Center, Susan B Anthony House and George Eastman Museum. Monroe County also boasts a well-connected public library system with branches close to UR like Central Library of Rochester and Brighton Memorial Library. For film lovers, the Little Theater and Dryden Theater downtown presents a vast variety of cinema, plays and screenings throughout the winter season, and they also offer a discount on student IDs! Broadway shows also make their way upstate and are performed at the West Herr Auditorium by the Rochester Broadway Theater League (RBTL). I attended ‘MJ’ last Christmas, a musical tribute to Michael Jackson, and the whole experience was really memorable! There are a few cafés which organize Paint N’ Sip events during the winter holidays for folks still in town. The Seneca Park Zoo and Lamberton Observatory are open year-round with indoor exhibits for folks who desire to catch a glimpse of some different flora and fauna. For some active fun indoors, you can try out rock climbing at Central Rock Gym or RocVentures, free hand jumping at Altitude Trampoline Park and Rochester Parkour, bowling at Radio Social, solving an escape room or even driving a go-kart indoors at IndyKart Raceway. All of these are great ways to keep oneself physically (and in turn, mentally) active during the long dark days of winter, when it’s often easy to feel lethargic and miss out regular exercise and necessary body movements.

If you’ve read through this far, you probably understand that winters in Rochester are not as dull as they appear to be and if you find enough time, there’s a surfeit of fun activities to do once the days start getting shorter. I’ve tried my absolute best to make an inclusive list and include all categories of things to-do within and around the city of Rochester. Nevertheless, it is absolutely necessary to take precautions while stepping outside in the winters and enjoying all these fun activities in good health. Each person has their own comfort zone when it comes to winter clothing and protective layers, but to summarize, the absolute essentials include a heavy winter coat, insulated gloves, snow boots and a thick hat or headgear. Most of these clothing items are readily available in Rochester at outlet stores, thrift stores or online, so don’t stress about packing your suitcases with a ton of winter clothes while arriving; you should find everything here. Some personal tips include investing in a neck warmer (covering the neck, ears, mouth and nose), which would prevent you from needing to zip up your coat to a point of suffocation, or wearing a layer of thermals underneath to insulate body warmth better without adding bulky layers on top. Considering the number of layers required to step outside, it does a take a bit of extra time to get ready for university in the winters, so I tend to shift my alarms 15 minutes earlier, allowing me to still get to campus with enough time to spare to take off the protective layers before getting to work. If you own a car, you might need to shift your alarms even earlier as getting your car warm and ready to drive would take another additional 5-10 minutes at least before you can head over to work. Unless you have indoor parking, you’d need a snowbrush and an ice scraper (sometimes, they come combined in one tool) to wipe off snow accumulated on your vehicle and chip off any frozen icicles on your windshield. Pro tip – leave your wipers up when there’s snow in the forecast as this reduces the chance that they’d get frozen and stuck the next morning. During peak winters, it’s advised to start your car engine and drive for some time every other day, or there’s a chance your car battery might get damaged. Hence, with a bit of planning and precaution, there’s a ton of wonderful recreational activities to take a break from work even during the cold dark days of Rochester’s winter!