When I moved to Brooklyn this fall, I was a little disappointed when long-time New Yorkers told me it really doesn’t snow that much here. Come on, I wanted to experience a real East Coast Winter!
Well, I guess I got one. Jeff Masters compiled these numbers for his Weather Underground Blog (thanks Joyce). This is a list of the top ten snowfalls in Central Park since 1869. Half of them have been in the last decade, and two of them have been this winter!
1) 26.9″ Feb 11-12, 2006
2) 26.4″ Dec 26-27, 1947
3) 21.0″ Mar 12-14, 1888
4) 20.8″ Feb 25-26, 2010
5) 20.2″ Jan 7-8, 1996
6) 20.0″ Dec 26-27, 2010
7) 19.8″ Feb 16-17, 2003
8) 19.0″ Jan 26-27, 2011
9) 18.1″ Mar 7-8, 1941
10) 17.7″ Feb 5-7, 1978
How does this tie in to global warming? Apparently, snow is more likely during warmer winters. Meteorologists say that if it keeps getting warming, we can expect to see even more snow in the coming winters. But eventually we’ll reach a kind of tipping point where it gets too warm to snow. And that will be sad.