In the heart of New York, Central Park is enveloped in a beautiful white coat on Tuesday, the megacity and other regions of the northeastern United States - more than 30 million inhabitants - being paralyzed by 30 centimeters of snow in places .
Consequences of this snowstorm anticipated by the American weather: more than 1,220 flights to and from New York were canceled at midday, including almost half of those at LaGuardia airport, more than a quarter of flights in Newark, the large airport in New Jersey in the New York suburbs, as well as 20% of the traffic at the historic JFK airport platform, according to the Flight Aware website.
“Avoid moving”
Schools, courts and public offices are also closed and roads almost deserted after the National Weather Service (NWS) recommended that motorists drive
“with extreme caution”
or
“simply avoid travel if possible”
.
New York City (8.5 million inhabitants), its emblematic sites like Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge or Times Square, and all the suburbs where millions of other residents live, were covered in the morning a thick and magnificent white coat, reminiscent of images of Epinal in winter of one of the most famous cities in the world.
Few joggers and dogs in Central Park but already a few snowmen and snowball fights, according to AFP photographers.
The last snowfall in the city dates back to January 16, which ended 700 days without snow.
“Four to eight inches (10 to 20 cm) of snow with wind gusts of 65 km/h are expected”
during the day, according to the New York City (NYC) warning system.
From dawn, 2.5 to 5 cm of snow per hour fell on
"certain areas"
of the New York metropolitan area, notably on the residential suburbs of Westchester County, to the north of the city, stuck between the Atlantic and the Hudson River, according to the NWS.
Same thing to the west, in the industrial and bedroom suburbs of New Jersey and to the east on the Long Island peninsula which points towards the Atlantic.
Climate change
In total, 32 million residents of the states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are affected by bad weather according to the NWS, with up to 33 cm of snow in towns in New Jersey.
Apart from the small snowy episode in mid-January, New York City had not seen such precipitation since February 2022. On the other hand, at Christmas 2022, the
“blizzard of the century”
and more than a meter of snow in the north and west of the immense state of New York, largely rural, had caused dozens of deaths, particularly in the city of Buffalo on the Canadian border, hundreds of kilometers northwest of New York City .
In the United States and the rest of the world, the frequency, intensity, and unpredictability of summer and winter weather are increasing due to climate change.