Even though there wasn’t much more than two inches of snowfall overall, Tuesday’s snowfall was New York City’s largest in over two years and ended the city’s longest string of substantial accumulation-free days.
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The National Weather Service reported that at 7 p.m., Central Park had received 1.7 inches of precipitation; nevertheless, the winter weather did not last long. According to the Weather Service, no area in the city received more than two inches of snow, the snowflakes that adorned the morning commute transitioned to rain by the afternoon, and no further snow was predicted tonight.
A period of 701 days without significant accumulation of snow—defined in New York City as at least one inch falling in Central Park on any given day—was broken by the light snowfall. Monday night saw the first snowfall of 0.4 inches before midnight, and Tuesday morning saw 1.2 inches.
1.6 inches of snow fell in Central Park on February 13, 2022, marking the start of the current snowless stretch about two years ago.
According to James Tomasini, another weather service meteorologist, it broke the city’s previous record of 400 days without any major snowfall, which ended on March 21, 1998, and had stood for decades.
According to Mr. Tomasini, a low-pressure system that pushed up from the South on Monday was the cause of the snow. By Tuesday afternoon, the system had moved off the coasts of South and North Carolina and was east and north of New York City, according to the Weather Service.
Wintertime in Central Park usually brings roughly twenty-four inches of snow. However, only 2.3 inches of snow fell there overall during last year’s mild winter—the least amount since records began to be kept there in 1869.
The majority of the 2023 snowfall happened over two days, starting on February 27. Even though the storm produced about two inches of total rainfall, the streak was maintained with less than an inch falling per day.
There is usually a warmer and a colder side to storm systems. There was less snowfall in New York last year because the city was hit by most storms on the warmer side.
According to Mr. Tomasini, the weather pattern from the previous year was peculiar, and it was already looking like this year will be snowier. “It seems improbable that the kind of winter we experienced last year would occur again,” he stated.
“We’ve been in this active pattern, so there’s already another chance of snow for the end of the week,” he continued.