Snow is a no-show in North Jersey as flakes turn to downpour by midday. What happened?
A forecasted snowfall that promised up to five inches in parts of North Jersey failed to deliver when a brief dusting Wednesday morning turned to rain and quickly washed away what experts expected to be the first winter storm of the season.
As late as 9 a.m., the National Weather Service was still predicting flurries across the region, with the heaviest accumulations expected in areas throughout the northwest of the state.
"This will be the first impactful snow of the season for some, so don’t let the first snow sneak up on you," the National Weather Service center in Mount Holly tweeted.
But by early afternoon, precipitation turned to rain, dousing the meager covering left by the cold.
"It was a tricky forecast," said Dominick Ramunni, a meteorologist with NWS. "The question was, how quickly does the precipitation move in and the cold air scatter out? Little fluctuations in those variables could mean the difference between a couple inches across the area or what we saw."
In the end, the cold air simply did not hold, he said, clinging to temperatures close to the freezing point but never falling far enough below for the snow to keep up.
Areas atop higher elevations in western Passaic County saw up to a half-inch of accumulation but barely a trace was recorded closer to New York City, according to NWS.
"Certainly, not what I would call a typical snow storm in the region," Ramunni said.
A few towns in North Jersey managed measurable accumulation before the rain. Ramsey saw 0.8 inches of snow and Sparta received one inch. Farther south in Stewartsville, residents got a whopping 2.1 inches, according to Bob Ziff of the North Jersey Weather Observers. Some schools closed on Wednesday or called for early dismissals.
Smatterings of substantial snowfall aside, this has been the mildest January on record since the 1920s based on the daily average temperature, which is currently 40.8 degrees, according to Weather Service data collected from Newark Liberty Airport.
Typically, the daily average for January is around 36 degrees, Ramunni said.
By the same yardstick, this is the area's third mildest winter season, which begins Dec. 1.
However, the region is still a few days away from breaking records when it comes to a dearth of snow.
So far, 321 days have passed without measurable snowfall in Central Park (measurable snowfall refers to accumulation of more than 0.1 inches,) according to NWS. But in 2020, Central Park managed 333 days without more than a slight dusting.
Similarly, the weather center in Central Park did not see measurable snowfall until Jan. 29 in the 1972-73 winter season, which remains the longest it has taken for such an event to occur. That record will hold unless the lack of snow continues through Sunday, said meteorologist Bryan Ramsey.
"This is about as mild as it gets around here," Ramunni said.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ snowstorm forecast a bust as weather turns to rain
