New York City breaks 50-year record for snowless winter

Meteorologists say it hasn't snowed across New York City in 326 days, breaking a 50-year record for the longest time without the first measurable winter snowfall, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The city broke the record on Sunday, per the National Weather Service's snowfall records, which date back to 1869. The previous record was from 1973, when it didn't snow until Jan. 29. NYC is also set to break the record for "longest streak of consecutive days without measurable snow", per The New York Times. The current record, set on Dec. 15, 2020, is 332 days.

The National Weather Service says it typically snows in the city by mid-December; however, New Yorkers have been experiencing rain instead, and the atypical weather reached an unseasonably warm 57 degrees last Thursday. Though they can't pinpoint one particular reason for the lack of flurries, meteorologists say the warmer weather affecting cities up and down the East Coast — including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., all three of which are also setting records for snowless winters — is due in part to La Niña, the Times reports.

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"We just haven't been in a favorable pattern for it this year," said James Tomasini, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in New York, per the Journal.

Tomasini told the Journal that while there have been small traces of snow in the NYC area this winter, overall levels haven't been enough to meet the threshold of a measurable snowfall, which is at least 0.1 inch. Meanwhile, other parts of New York State have had the complete opposite problem — take the deadly winter storm that hit Buffalo at the end of last year, for example.