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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — New York City finally received rain on Tuesday.
Well, sort of. The five boroughs went 29 days without receiving any measurable rainfall, breaking records in the process. However, on Tuesday, Central Park recorded 0.
01 inches of rain from a passing shower, technically bringing the streak of rainless days to an end, according to Dave Dombek, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather . That being said, 1924 still holds the crown for the year with the longest amount of time Central Park has gone without any measurable precipitation - 36 days, from Oct. 10 through Nov.
13. Although this dry spell of 2024 fell short of breaking the all-time record for consecutive days without rain in New York City, it managed to set itself apart in the second place spot, beating out the 28-day streak set in 1941, as reported by the National Weather Service (NWS) . “The dry streak started on the very last day of September, because on the 29th it actually did rain; It was a pretty considerable amount of rain and then the dryness started on the 30th,” Dombek said.
“And then every day through yesterday, which was the 28th, either had nothing, many days nothing, or those two days (two days in early October) you had a trace.” Interestingly, while droplets could be felt in the borough, the Staten Island Advance/SILive.com weather station did not record any measurable rainfall Tuesday.
Despite the streak being broken, the city still has an “extremely high chance” at breaking another record. Should we make it through the next few days without any measurable rainfall, New York City will have set a record for the driest October on record. Dombek reports that aside from the slight chance of a shower sometime Tuesday evening, the next opportunity for rain isn’t until late Thursday night or Friday morning.
Should the rain hold off until the end of Halloween, Central Park will have only received 0.01 of an inch of precipitation for the entire month. “We could get something measurable then (Friday) but October is done, it’s past and it’s already Nov.
1,” said Dombek. “So again, we have an excellent chance of this being first place as far as the driest October on record. Right now, as it stands, the driest October on record in the books is 1963.
” In October 1963, Dombek says the city received only 0.14 of an inch of rain. Additionally, we still have a chance of breaking the record for the driest month in city history.
Currently, the driest month in New York City was June 1949, which only featured 0.02 of an inch of rain, according to the NWS. The door also remains open for this autumn to be among the driest in recorded history .
Even if none of these records get topped, this October was still one for the weather history books, with the precipitation tally falling far short of the average monthly rainfall amount. For reference, October typically delivers 4.38 inches of rain to the Central Park area, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data from 1991 through 2020.
As of late, New York City has been stuck in a pattern preventing any considerable rainfall in the area. Dombek notes that disturbances out west may pack substantial rainfall but by the time they reach the East they have much less moisture to work with, and so these potential storms fall apart. “We’re kind of in that same pattern still, at least for the short term; I’d say the next week or so, maybe 10 days or so,” said Dombek.
“But there are some signs, there are some indications, that the pattern at least subtly changes as we get a little deeper into November, where at least we’ll have more opportunities for getting some measurable rain and maybe more than just measurable, but something a little more substantial.” Now Dombek clarifies that this doesn’t mean we’ll suddenly enter a pattern of ceaseless rain, but we could finally see a return to more normal rainfall conditions. more weather stories.
