New York City tied a temperature record before breakfast and could break it before lunch.
(Bloomberg) — New York City tied a temperature record before breakfast and could break it before lunch.
Temperatures in Central Park hit 61F (16C) early Friday, tying a record for the date set in 2001, said James Tomasini, a National Weather Service meteorologist at Upton, NY on Long Island. LaGuardia Airport also reached 60 degrees, tying the record there.
While a brief, weak cold front subsequently pushed through the area, lowering temperatures, Tomasini expects Manhattan to reach a high of 64 later, which would be a new record for Feb. 10. Central Park’s all-time warmest reading for the month of February was 78, on Feb. 21, 2018.
With the exception some brief, frigid days, winter has been relatively mild in New York City this year, mainly because a larger pattern has kept storms to the north and west. This is typical when there’s a La Nina in the Pacific, like this year, which has kept most of the East Coast on the warmer side of winter.
That’s what’s happening Friday, Tomasini said. A storm passing over the Great Lakes is pulling warmer air from the south up to New York, Philadelphia and Boston.
Temperatures were 9.8 degrees above normal through January and just above average so far in February. Since Dec. 1, Central Park has also only had 0.4 inch (1 centimeter) of snow, 16.9 inches below normal. A lack of snow and cold can hurt retailers, such as hardware stores that rely on sales of shovels, salt and snow blowers to meet annual revenues.
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