Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll look at who measures the snow in Central Park. We’ll also get details on developments over the weekend involving two officials who worked in the administration of former Mayor Eric Adams.
When the news anchors and the weather forecasters said that 8.8 inches fell yesterday in Central Park during the day, it’s because of measuring that Lindsay Okarmus did.
The 8.8 inches that accumulated from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., from the biggest snowstorm in recent years, did not break any records for Jan. 25. A 10-inch snowfall on that day in 1905 still holds the title, according to the National Weather Service.
Where forecasters depend on satellites and computer models. Okarmus has one tool, a long metal measuring stick. She is the director of landscape services for the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit that manages the park and has been responsible for taking snow readings — and reporting them to the Weather Service — for 11 years.
“Six-point-four,” she announced a few minutes before 1 p.m., dipping the measuring stick into wet, woolly snow that had accumulated since her first check of the day six hours earlier. The snow and freezing rain — from a storm that hovered low and reduced the buildings that surround the park to silhouettes in the distance — continued through a bitterly cold day. (Yesterday the Weather Service asked for an additional midafternoon reading while Okarmus was taking a break. Kelli Jordan, the conservancy’s manager of park maintenance, did the reading and called it in.)
Okarmus’s technique is deft: In the out-of-the-way location where the conservancy takes its measurements, she takes care not to plunge the measuring stick into the snow. “There are others who do it differently,” she said, “but I don’t want to shake it and slam into the board on the bottom. That could cause the snow to compact” — and change the measurement.
There have been long stretches when the measuring stick hung, unused, on its hook on a wall in a park building that dates to 1900. The city went for 701 days without measurable snow in 2023 and 2024.
“When it’s literally a trace or a dusting — a trace is what they officially call it when there’s just a covering that’s not measurable — we still have to call in” to the Weather Service, she said. “It’s still important to the historical record, but it doesn’t make you feel like you’ve contributed that much.”
The conservancy has measured snow in the park since December 2015. Before that, readings were taken at the Central Park Zoo, which weather cognoscenti said was underreporting snow measurements. The Weather Service — which gets temperature, wind and barometric pressure readings from automated equipment near Belvedere Castle in the park — retroactively adjusted the amounts reported from the zoo after three storms, adding 3.3 inches to the seasonal total.
Okarmus has a degree from Fordham University in psychology (“I use it every day, working in New York”) but became interested in horticulture on a summer job in Buffalo, her hometown. When she graduated from Fordham, she wanted to stay in New York; she found a gardening job with the conservancy and worked her way up through the ranks.
And she loves snow. “I know that’s an opinion not everybody shares,” she said.
But snow “makes everybody happy,” Okarmus said, adding, “It seems like dogs are smiling when it’s snowing, and the park, I think, looks the most beautiful when it’s covered in snow.”
Weather
In the morning, a winter storm warning will be in effect; snow and freezing rain are possible. Expect a cloudy day that gradually becomes mostly sunny, with a high near 32. Tonight will be mostly clear with a low around 13.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended for snow removal.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I just like being in New York.” — Kerry McAuliffe, whose family of five lives on $140,000 a year, on why she hasn’t moved to where life would be more affordable.
The latest Metro news
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Remote school day: Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that New York City school buildings would be closed today and that students would switch to remote instruction. Students whose teachers have a previously scheduled “professional learning day” will have the day off.
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Transit adjustments: The M.T.A. advised New Yorkers to continue avoiding travel when possible today. NJ Transit suspended bus, rail and Access Link services yesterday.
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Undeterred by the storm: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the American Museum of Natural History remained open, and most Broadway shows continued as planned.
Other News
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Pro-Israel group targets a former ally: A super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is running ads against former U.S. Representative Tom Malinowski, a Democrat who is seeking to fill the House seat vacated by New Jersey’s new governor, Mikie Sherrill.
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Cyndi Lauper cleans out her closet: Fans lined up on the Lower East Side for a chance to buy clothing from the pop star’s exuberant wardrobe.
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A champion of historic preservation: John Beyer was the last surviving founder of Beyer Blinder Belle, a New York architecture firm whose projects included transforming Grand Central Terminal from its past life as a dark, crime-ridden place. He was 92.
Adams ally is focus of a criminal investigation
Over the weekend there were developments involving two officials from former Mayor Eric Adams’s inner circle.
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The New York Times reported that Frank Carone, who helped orchestrate Adams’s 2021 campaign and then was chief of staff during Adams’s first year in office, is the focus of a long-running federal corruption investigation.
Carone has worked as a consultant since leaving City Hall, and while the scope of the investigation is unclear, it has looked into his business dealings as well as his time in city government. An indictment would further tarnish the legacy of Adams’s administration. Adams himself was indicted on federal corruption charges in the fall of 2024, four months before the Biden administration left office. The case was eventually dropped by the Trump administration.
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Kaz Daughtry, who as a deputy mayor under Adams was the city’s liaison to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is joining the Department of Homeland Security. Daughtry, a former police detective, will to serve as the agency’s civilian contact with law enforcement across New York State.
At City Hall, Daughtry helped to plan large-scale raids in New York City that aided the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. The police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, blocked the raids, concerned that they would violate local law. Daughtry also figures in a TV project called “Behind the Badge.”
The program was supposed to showcase the work of the Police Department. But last week the city, under a new mayor, took the producers to court. The city’s lawyers said that the show could put police operations — and undercover officers, witnesses and crime victims — at risk.
METROPOLITAN diary
Changing trains
Dear Diary:
It was the morning after a snowstorm. The sky was pink, and the weather app warned of black ice and frostbite.
Entering the subway at Atlantic Avenue, I listened: 2, 3, 4 and 5, all delayed. I took the R to DeKalb.
When we pulled in, the train operator told us that there was a sick passenger and that we should transfer.
I got on the B. As I did, a woman started to exit for the R that I had just gotten off.
“Is that one good?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Better to stay put.”
She sat down, and I stood across from her. The train began to move and then shuddered to a halt. The train operator said there was an unauthorized person on the roadbed.
While we waited, the woman complimented a man nearby on his prayer-bead bracelets. She showed her wrist. She was wearing one, too.
The train started moving again, bypassing the Grand Street station and creeping slowly into Broadway-Lafayette.
“I can see the station!” I exclaimed with glee to my new friends.
“It’s our city,” the woman said, standing to get off.
“We made it,” the man said, and then took a call in Italian on his phone.
As we got off, I said, “In bocca al lupo.” (It’s Italian for good luck, literally “into the wolf’s mouth.”)
He smiled.
“Brava,” he said. “Crepi.” (“May it die.”)
And we went our separate ways.
— Gwynneth Malin
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post How Many Inches of Snow Fell? She Has a Measuring Stick. appeared first on New York Times.
