Where Does The February 1st Snowstorm Rank In All NYC Snow Events?

 GOTHAMIST

BY JEN CHUNG AND JAKE DOBKIN

Snow fun on February 1, 2021 SCOTT LYNCH / GOTHAMIST

The National Weather Service says that the February 1st snowstorm—not a blizzard*—had 17.2 inches of snowfall in Central Park, as of 7 a.m. on Tuesday.

That puts it in the top 20 NYC snow storms on record, clocking in at number 17:

As you can see by this scatterplot below, we've had a relatively high number of 12 inches-or-more snowstorms in recent years. Remember when we got 20+ inches in December 2010 (and then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in Bermuda) and then another 20+ inches in January 2011 (which was thundersnow):

*The NWS defines blizzards has having three consecutive hours or more of visibility at a quarter of a mile or lower due to heavy or blowing snow, as well as frequent wind gusts of 35 mph or greater over the course of three consecutive hours.

NYC: WHEN IT SNOWS, IT POURS

De Blasio visits the Upper East Side on Wednesday.

N.Y TIMES

John J. Doherty, New York City’s sanitation commissioner, has had better weeks.

First a storm dumped a foot of snow, as temperatures dropped into the low double digits.

Then residents of the tony Upper East Side accused Mr. Doherty’s new boss, Mayor Bill de Blasio, of failing to have their streets plowed, perhaps in some kind of reverse-elitist snub. They said Mr. Doherty’s old boss, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, would never have let such a mess accumulate.

 

A MTA bus travelling east on Livingston Street, Brooklyn slid on the unplowed, icy roadway...Photo: Theodore Parisienne,  N.Y. Post

 

Then Mr. de Blasio himself, after initially defending the Sanitation Department’s performance, backtracked and said that maybe it had not done such a good job after all.

 

While he did not precisely throw Mr. Doherty under the plow-fitted sanitation truck, Mr. de Blasio said Wednesday that “more could have been done to serve the Upper East Side.”

 

Mr. de Blasio had asked Mr. Doherty, who has served as commissioner since 2002 (and before that, from 1994 to 1998), to stay on, presumably to prevent such slip-ups.

On Thursday afternoon, several reporters intercepted Mr. Doherty — who had been spotted earlier in the day sitting stiffly outside the mayor’s office — as he left a meeting with aides to Mr. de Blasio.

The mayor’s office said Mr. Doherty had been called in and asked to undertake a full review of the management of the storm on the Upper East Side. Suffice it to say, Mr. Doherty was not eager to chat.