When I awoke Tuesday, the snow had already been falling for hours in New York City. Soft, gray light peeked through my drawn blinds. The patter of raindrops I’d heard the night before became the muffled stillness of snowflakes while I slept.
As I lay in bed, I realized I’d missed that quiet that accompanies a snowfall. I did my best not to think about how rare this little miracle has become, largely thanks to climate change. Up and down the East Coast, a winter storm dumped inches — or in some places feet — of snow on millions of Americans. The paltry 1.2” that fell in Central Park by around noon was almost as much snow as New York City saw all last year — the lowest total snowfall since records began just after the Civil War. As I went through my morning routine, I tried to avoid thinking about how long it may be between now and the next significant snowfall.
I wasn’t successful. Watching the flakes swirl outside my living room window, I remembered that the planet is coming off the hottest January ever recorded. That distressing milestone follows 2023 being hotter than any year going back to at least 1850. Global temperatures over the last 12 months have brushed against the 1.5º Celsius average increase that climate scientists have warned — repeatedly — could lead to major changes on weather patterns.
Watching the flakes swirl outside my living room window, I remembered that the planet is coming off the hottest January ever recorded.
Scrolling through social media, I saw parents complain about Mayor Eric Adams, who’d opted against a full snow day in favor of a remote learning day. The NYC Public Schools’ system crashed as thousands of students attempted to log on. I empathized with those kids; the amount of snow coating New York streets would have been more than enough to shut down the schools when I was growing up in Washington, D.C. It was a major culture shock then to move to Michigan, where anything less than 5” of snow was seen as a nonevent and anything less than a foot assumed to be easily surmountable for parents and school buses.
That used to be closer to the case in New York, where the average winter saw closer to 2 feet fall across the boroughs. Last year’s drought saw the city break its longest streak of consecutive days without measurable snow, a record last broken in 2020. It was also the year with the latest first day of measurable snowfall on the books, when a little under half an inch fell on Central Park in early February. The average first day of accumulating snowfall in the city has been closer to mid-December.
I resolved to make the most of the snow while I could, throwing on a thick hooded jacket and lacing up a pair of boots that have had little practical use since I’d bought them last year. I headed out in the direction of a nearby park in what was already a snowstorm holding on for dear life. The flakes were the dense, heavy sort that have only begrudgingly agreed to briefly take on solid form.
That’s befitting a region that has been warming even in the eight years since I moved to the city. New York now falls within the range of a humid subtropical climate zone, after previously being a humid continental climate. According to the National Climate Assessment’s requirements, that means that temperatures in the city have averaged above 72ºF in the summer and 27ºF degrees in the winter, a bar that had been hit for five years by then. Plants that once only thrived much farther south now happily live in Manhattan, and the warmer weather has meant much more rain for the city, as we saw throughout December and January.
When I arrived at the park, the snow was less than pristine. A woman built a snowman with her young daughter, who looked no older than 3, in the middle of the running track. This may be the first snowfall the child remembers. The tracks of slush around them illustrated that their project was slow going. “It was a better idea in theory,” the mother confided in me, as she patted the thick boulder that would form the head into place. By the time I took in the view of the East River and turned to leave the park, the child was back in her stroller, the finished snowman watching them retreat.
The storm was already slowing to a flurry as I retraced my steps toward home.
It’s true that isolated snowfall averages don’t tell the whole story of climate change, same as there being snow at all in no way disproves that climate change is real. But what is clear is that the increasing temperatures are breaking previous expectations and making weather patterns much less predictable around the world. When parts of Texas experience a deep freeze thanks to cold air escaping the Arctic, and areas of the world have begun to swelter even at night during the summer, that’s as much fueled by human-made climate change as cities along the Eastern Seaboard going deeper into the winter without snow.
The storm was already slowing to a flurry as I retraced my steps toward home. Half-melted slush on the sidewalks squelched under my boots rather than crunching like fine powder on a truly cold day. I appreciated that in Michigan when the air was frigid and the wind was cutting, there was still something uplifting about the feeling of snowflakes on your nose and eyelashes. And I couldn’t help feeling that much sadder than I had at the outset of my little trek.
Not because the snow that had fallen would likely be completely melted within the next day or two at most. After all, snow is ephemeral. That’s always been part of its appeal to me; it’s what makes places where there’s snow year-round seem so remote and wondrous. But I fear that days like Tuesday have become so sporadic that it may be a long time before the girl in the park sees another heavy snowfall. What will that mean when days of snow in New York City go from magical to mythical, a story told that requires imagination to fill in the gaps of what the eyes have never experienced?
