Mother Nature is playing a cruel April Fools' Day joke across the northeast today. That early spring that the groundhog predicted? Forget about it. Even baseball's opening day yesterday was dampened by wintry weather.
Snow flurries were spotted across New York City today (April 1), and cities further north had more serious snow . April snow, unpleasant as it may be, is not unusual weather , according to data from the National Weather Service.
To get an idea of how common it is in the Northeast and to honor the start of baseball season we compared New York's April snowfall records to the city of its bitter baseball rival, Boston. Here are the stats:
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Average April snowfall for NYC: 0.5 inches (1.27 centimeters)
Average April snowfall for Boston: 0.3 inches (0.8 cm)
Snowiest April in NYC: 13.5 inches (34 cm), 1875
Snowiest April in Boston: 22.4 inches (57 cm), 1997
Biggest April snowstorm in NYC: 10.2 inches (26 cm), April 3 to April 4, 1915.
Biggest April snowstorm in Boston: 25.4 inches (65 cm), March 31 to April 1, 1997
Latest inch or more of snow in NYC: 3 inches (8 cm), April 25, 1875
Latest inch or more in of snow Boston: 1 inch (2.54 cm), April 28, 1987
Boston seems to come out on top, but both cities share an equally miserable spring record the earliest date for the first 90 degree Fahrenheit temperature. That was set last year on April 7, at 92 degrees F (33 C) in New York City and 90 degrees (32 C) in Boston.
Email OurAmazingPlanet staff writer Brett Israel at bisrael@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @btisrael.
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