Messy wintry NYC storm likely not enough to break Central Park snowless streak
A messy mix of snowy rain fell on the Big Apple Saturday in what was advertised as the first major winter storm of 2024 — but the storm, forecast to continue Sunday, wasn’t expected to leave snow on the ground.
As of Saturday, it had been 692 days since Central Park got an inch of snow in a 24-hour period.
Expect that streak to grow. Flurries started to flutter down on the city around 3 p.m. Saturday — but forecasters said the accumulation wouldn’t amount to much.
Much of the greater New York City area sits right on the edge of the storm’s rain-snow line, with meteorologists noting temperatures have been warmer in the region than expected.
While forecasters warned of the potential for moderate to heavy amounts of snow in several major Northeast cities, people east of Interstate 95 — including New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. — were told to expect a wintry mess of snow, sleet and rain instead.
It was plenty messy on Saturday — but some New Yorkers wished it’d be worse, if that meant the city might finally be covered with a blanket of white.
“I really want there to be snow,” said Upper West Sider Gabriella Lopez, 26, who moved to New York in 2022 from a snowy part of Utah.
“I want to experience the city — like, how pretty it gets with the snow. So I want it to stick,” Lopez said. “But I don’t think it will”
Before the storm began began in New York City late Saturday afternoon, forecasters saw the potential for 1 to 2 inches of wet, slushy snowfall. However, the National Weather Service later said it was expected to turn to rain by 10 p.m. Saturday night before dissipating entirely on Sunday.
“This looks to be a sharp gradation in snow accumulation around the New York City, metro area with little or no snow in eastern Brooklyn and Queens [and] with one to three inches in Manhattan,” said AccuWeather meteorologist Dean DeVore.
The best chance of accumulation was in upper Manhattan and the Bronx, DeVore said.
But around 8 p.m., the city wasn’t cold enough to support significant snowfall — the reported temperature in Central Park was 35 degrees.
Though the weekend storm was unlikely to pack a wintry wallop, forecasters said it will bring dangerous travel conditions into Sunday afternoon. Heavy winds and flooding are also expected in some areas, including Long Island and the Long Island Sound.
Upstaters faced the possibility of a much bigger storm. The state Department of Transportation said its crews were “plowing and treating the roadways as quickly as possible.”
Around Albany and much of the rest of upstate New York, Weather Service forecasters expected seven to 12 inches of snow, blown around by winds of up to 35 mph in higher elevations in the Adirondacks and elsewhere.
Along the East Coast, the heaviest snow was forecast in parts of the Central Appalachians, the interior Mid-Atlantic and into New England.
With Julian Roberts-Grmela
