New York in winter conjures up traditional images of Central Park and Times Square shrouded in a blanket of white. But not this year. Not a single snowflake fell on Sunday, the metropolis breaking a 50-year record for the first snowfall of the winter season.
An unusual situation that disturbs residents whose love/hate relationship with snow is already very complicated. “It’s really sad,” Anne Hansen, a retired teacher, told AFP. “Normally, we don’t like to see the snow coming. But now we begin to regret it bitterly.
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“The snow is beautiful to see on the first day”
In the metropolis nicknamed “the big apple”, the first snowfalls occur on average in mid-December. Last year, it took until Christmas Eve. Schoolchildren and employees then appreciate the “snow days” often generously allocated, which allows them to stay at home.
The children take out their sledges and the adults put on their cross-country skis, heading to Central Park. “We stay at home, we drink hot chocolate, the dog loves it,” director Renata Romain told AFP. But, he hastens to add, “the snow is beautiful to see on the first day, but after that it gets dirty, it melts and it’s filthy”.
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Meteorologists count snow starting at 0.1 inch (a quarter of a centimeter) in height in Central Park. A few isolated flakes are therefore not enough. In 1973, New Yorkers waited until January 29 for snow, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
326 days in a row without snow
The absence of snow on Sunday therefore means that this duration has been exceeded for the first time since records began in 1869. New York is also approaching its longest series of days in a row without snow: the record to be beaten is of 332 days. On Sunday, the number of 326 days was reached.
“It’s very unusual,” confirms Nelson Vaz, a meteorologist, to AFP, recalling the recent paradoxical cold spells. One meter of snow fell in December in Buffalo, killing 39 people.
But in New York, 600 kilometers to the south, this historic storm that froze much of the United States around Christmas resulted in lots of rain and abnormally high temperatures. You have to go back to 1932 to find a warmer start to January than this year, according to Weather.com.
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