New York Might Be Losing One of Its Wintry Charms As Temperatures Rise

If the movie Home Alone 2 (1992), in which then–child actor Macaulay Culkin plays Kevin, were filmed in the past several years, there would be little to virtually no snow to be seen beyond or on the little boy’s shoulder. There would be no snowcover on the ground of the Central Park where Kevin meets the Pigeon Lady.

Our analysis of 70 years of climatic data collected in Central Park by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that temperatures and liquid precipitation during winter have a strong positive correlation, resulting in fewer snow days. In particular, the number of wet days has increasedgrown by nearly 36% over the past forty years.

Climate scientists say that, driven by rising temperatures, many parts of the country — including New York City — will be seeing less and less snow. “As temperatures rise, storms that once produced snow are increasingly delivering rain, driving up the number of rainy winter days we’ve seen over the past few decades,” Professor Mingfang Ting at Columbia Climate School wrote in an email.

In January 2024, for instance, the city saw its biggest single snow day in nearly two years. That is to say, New Yorkers had not seen a meaningful amount of snow — an inch of accumulation — in 701 days, though it was less than two inches. It marked the longest streak without snow in the city.

Last year, the city experienced 33 rainy days and 2.3 niveous days during the cold season. It was 17.3 and 15 days, respectively, two decades ago.

“Climate change can affect the timing, location, and amount of snowfall, as well as the dynamics of snowmelt. Essentially, it is affecting the two basic conditions needed to produce snow: freezing temperatures and moisture in the atmosphere,” Shel Winkley, meteorologist at Climate Central, an independent organization of scientists and journalists researching and reporting on the changing climate and its impact on the American public, explained.

“For New York City,” he said, “it’s simply not as consistently cold as winters of past decades were. So more winter precipitation that once fell as snow now has a greater chance of falling as rain.”.