Konstantin Brandes
| 6 months ago
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Last winter on the east coast of the USA was mild and with little snow. Apparently he wants to make up for lost ground now – in the last days of spring – yesterday, Saturday, it snowed in the metropolis of New York.
Where this air, which is extremely cold for the time of year, came from, can be easily understood with the help of so-called trajectories. You can see in the following picture: Just a few days ago the air masses were over the still frozen Aktian Sea. Over the Hudson Bay (also still covered with ice) the air could not warm up and so the cold air (along the blue line) hit the northeast of the USA with full force.
This HYSPLIT model backward trajectory should give you an idea of how rare of a cold-air event this is for Mid-May. The air over NYC tomorrow AM was over the Arctic Ocean last week! These backward trajectories would be impressive for mid-Winter let alone mid-Spring! pic.twitter.com/fcg78jOrxY
– NWS New York NY (@NWSNewYorkNY) May 8, 2020
Saturday morning in Central Park only +1.1 degrees were measured. This not only means a negative record for May 9th, it has never been so cold so late in the year in New York’s measurement history. With only +8 degrees, the temperatures rose only slightly during the day. By the way, the average maximum temperature at this time of year in NYC is +20 degrees!
But not only the cold was very unusual, there was also snow. There was not enough snow in the city, but the weather station in Central Park still measured traces. It had only snowed so late in the year – namely in 1977. As a result, as much snow was registered yesterday as, for example, in the entire month of February 2020!
Finally, a few more impressions of this truly rare event:
Snow showers in #NYC on May 9th@StormTeam4NY @NBCNewYork #nbc4ny pic.twitter.com/r5gokXyKAf
— Steven Bognar (@Bogs4NY) May 9, 2020
17 seconds of May snow squall in #nyc pic.twitter.com/5tMY4QqeCP
— Mo Krochmal (@Krochmal) May 10, 2020
It snowed in #NYC, on #May pic.twitter.com/hdgBZevSqQ
— Nelson.J (@NelsonSubervi) May 9, 2020
Source cover picture: pixabay
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