Where the Hell Is All the Snow?

I moved house last month and in a fit of unusual willingness made sure to grab my snow boots and gloves from storage and keep them in the front of my closet while unpacking. I expected a January like the one I’ve experienced in Brooklyn for the past few years, riddled with regular snowstorms and biting cold winds that make walking the dog in the mornings a challenge.

A month later I’m still waiting and wondering where all the snow is in New York.

I’m not alone. As West Coast towers with (much needed) snow and the Midwest squats down Despite some severe storms this weekend, many of us who live in the mid-Atlantic have seen no snow at all this season.

“This entire corridor — New York, Philly, Baltimore, DC — hasn’t had snow accumulated yet, which is very unusual,” said Tom Kines, AccuWeather’s chief meteorologist. told United States today. “And even as far as Boston, even though it’s snowing up there (Monday), they haven’t had much snow there either.”

There hasn’t been any “measurable” snowfall in New York this winter –defined as at least 0.1 inches (0.3 centimeters) remaining on the ground. (Snow that falls and then melts, which has happened a few times this season, is called “track” snowfall.) The city’s record for the longest beginning of winter without a measurable snowfall was discontinued in 1973when the first snow fell on January 29th.

Dave Radell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said Gothamist this week that snow is “less and less likely” to fall before that date this year thanks to above-freezing temperatures forecast for the next few days.

“It looks dry for the next few days,” he said. “We’ll be running at the latest on the first measurable snowfall in the city.”

There are a few different factors driving our snowless January. Many of the big storms that have battered the surrounding states with snow just haven’t made it to shore this season, Kines told United States today.

Then, of course, there’s the elephant in the room: climate change. Weather is not climate – warm winters have been seen in the past, and a climate-changed world can still deliver biting cold. Contrary to intuition, warmer overall temperatures can actually trigger blizzards when they occur: warmer air can hold more moisturewhich can lead to increased snowfall during storms.

But there’s no denying that some of these warmer temperatures are playing a role in our increasingly warm winters. Snow needs freezing air and ground temperatures to fall and stick. This last weekNew York saw torrential downpours but no lower temperatures 35 degrees Fahrenheit (1.7 degrees Celsius), with average temperatures hovering around 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 degrees Celsius) – definitely not cold enough for snow. Statistics from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that nearly 80% of weather stations in the US have observed shifts in the type of winter precipitation they experience—rain versus snow—since the 1930s, thanks to climate change.

Seems like there are more Januarys to wait for snow.