High temperature records were broken throughout the tristate area Sunday as New Yorkers and suburbanites enjoyed unseasonably warm weather.
It reached 68 degrees in Central Park, surpassing the previous record of 65 set on March 3, 1991, according to the National Weather Service. Meteorologists in Newark recorded a high temperature of 70 degrees, cruising past the previous record of 66 from the same day in 1991.
Kennedy Airport saw a new record high of 68 degrees, easily surpassing the 1991 mark of 63 degrees, the weather service said. And LaGuardia reached 67 degrees, topping the old mark of 65 degrees set back in 1967.
“Numerous record high temperatures have been tied or broken today in response to dry northerly and westerly flow with sunny skies,” National Weather Service forecasters wrote Sunday. “This is thanks to surface high pressure building in from the north under a strong anomalous midlevel ridge.”
March 3, 2023, was much less pleasant. The high temperature in Central Park was only 47 degrees, with a low of 37 and 0.15 inches of precipitation.
New Yorkers who took advantage of the warm weather were smart to do so, as forecasters expected temperatures to drop Monday and throughout the rest of the week.
“Highs will be much cooler on Monday compared to today in the low/mid-50s,” the National Weather Service predicted. “This is due in part to weakening subsidence and increasing northerly and northeasterly flow with increasing cloud cover. Dry weather will remain on Monday.”
Meteorologists predicted more rain for the city beginning Tuesday and possibly continuing through Thursday.
Temperatures across the U.S. were uniform Sunday. In the afternoon, it was 62 degrees in Los Angeles, 71 degrees in Chicago and 65 degrees in Manhattan, with similar temperatures also stretching from Phoenix to Minneapolis to Philadelphia.
Last year was the hottest year in recorded human history and included several of the hottest days worldwide. But singular, outlier days are not necessarily a clear indicator of global trends. The record high for March 5 in Central Park, which is 72 degrees, was set in 1880.
