With Mild Winter, the City Revisits Fall Fashion and the Record Books

by Anthony Ramirez
Karen Flagg with her 3-year-old son, James, on the swings at the Bleecker Street Playground in Greenwich Village. New York City, basking in warm weather, hasn’t gone this long without snow since 1878.

The last recorded time the snowfall in Central Park came so late in the season, the date was Jan. 4, 1878.

Rutherford B. Hayes was president, the tallest building in the city was Trinity Church (281 feet), and there was no Statue of Liberty. (It was erected in 1886.)

In a sense, there was no New York, either. The boroughs consolidated in 1898. Before then, the Bronx was called the Annexed District, Queens was farms, Staten Island was nearly empty, and Brooklyn was the nation’s third-largest city.

Yesterday, with parts of the nation shivering and the Rockies and the Midwest pummeled by another snowstorm, the record for the latest appearance of snow in New York City was broken with little fanfare.

For now, not even a flurry is in the immediate forecast. Indeed, today the temperature might reach 71 degrees, which would be another record. According to the National Weather Service, it will not even come close to freezing until Tuesday night, when the temperature could go down to 30 degrees.

For many people interviewed yesterday — a warm day of mist and gray skies — the city without snow was both a bewilderment and a delight.

There was scarcely a fedora, a knit cap or a hoodie to be seen. Therese Kahn, an interior decorator on the Upper East Side, was wearing what she described as “comfortable” Stuart Weitzman patent-leather boots, rather than Gore-Tex snow boots.

“It’s amazing that it’s so nice,” said Ms. Kahn, 50, who also had on a thin white parka, unzipped. “I have two teenage daughters and I’m always worried that they’re not dressed warmly enough, so this lifts the pressure.”

Jan Khan, 53, has been a doorman at 88 Central Park West for 21 years. “This is the first year I see no snow coming down,” he said. “I don’t like it. It’s not normal.”

Mr. Khan, originally from Mansehra, in northern Pakistan, said winter was invading usually warmer countries of Asia. On Thursday, more than 30 people were reported dead in Madhya Pradesh, in central India, and at least 20 in Bihar, in northeastern India, because of a severe cold snap.

“In Pakistan that is the problem now,” Mr. Khan said. “Two feet, three feet of snow. The Arctic is happening in my country, and India and Bangladesh and Nepal and China, all under snow.”

In East Harlem, at the Three Kings Day Parade, which commemorates the arrival of the Magi in Bethlehem, Carlos Canales, 36, from Glendale, Queens, worried about the weather.

“People aren’t really ready for the winter anymore,” he said. “We’re going to get caught off guard when winter finally hits us and a lot of people are going to get sick.”

Nearby, in Central Park, Patrick Denehan, 36, a furniture mover from Washington Heights, sipped coffee and watched geese waddle near an ice-free Harlem Meer.

“It feels,” Mr. Denehan said, “like the Twilight Zone.”

There is one positive aspect to the warm weather: the pothole situation. The city’s Department of Transportation said that work crews paved 17,357 potholes last month, about a quarter fewer than the 22,685 during the much snowier December of 2005.

In December 1877, when The New York Times took note of the snowless Christmas, the day was described as crisp and sunny.

The headline said, “A MILD CHRISTMAS DAY — THOUSANDS OF PERSONS IN THE CENTRAL PARK.”

The Times account read, “It is estimated, and the estimate is thought to be moderate, that fully 50,000 persons were in the Park during the afternoon, nearly all of whom visited the new Museum, opened by the President on Saturday.”

The Times noted, however, that the weather did hurt certain businesses. “Dry-goods houses, clothiers and coal dealers have been the heaviest sufferers,” the newspaper said. “They have seen their Winter’s supplies lie on their hands almost undiminished.”

When snow finally fell for the first time that winter in Central Park on Jan. 4, 1878, The Times did not report it. The newspaper did say that Poughkeepsie had four inches of snow.

The National Weather Service was cautious yesterday about how snowless is snowless. Jeffrey Tongue, science and operations officer at the service’s Upton office on Long Island, said the Jan. 4, 1878, date is based on the best available records.

“When we’re talking about a snow flurry that might last 10 minutes,” Mr. Tongue said, “there’s a question whether those were fully documented. We believe the 1878 date is accurate, but of course there’s nobody alive to actually ask about it.”

Stephen Fybish, an amateur weather historian, contends that the record for late snow in Central Park occurred far later than 1878, indeed nearly a century later, on Jan. 29, 1973.

“This is also true,” said Mr. Tongue of the weather service. “The 1878 date is for a trace of snow, which doesn’t stick to the ground, and the 1973 date is for measurable snow, which was 1.8 inches.”

So, whether the start date for the snowless record should be Jan. 5 or Jan. 30 is a matter of keen scholarly interest.

But, please, the weather service urges, no wagering.

(c) www.nytimes.com