Snow totals reach 8 inches in Suffolk, 5 inches in Nassau
Tom Kenney clears the path in front of his home in Sayville on Saturday morning. Credit: Michael A. Rupolo Sr.
A post-Christmas storm that threatened to dump as much as 10 inches of snow on parts of New York fell short of delivering a heavy winter punch, though accumulation still surpassed levels seen in years in parts of New York City and Long Island.
The National Weather Service said an official measurement at the agency’s Central Park site registered 4.3 inches of snow Saturday morning, making it the first time it has experienced more than 4 inches of snowfall since Jan. 28-29, 2022, when it got 8.3 inches.
Long Island MacArthur Airport in Islip got 6.6 inches, according to official NWS totals.
David Stark, an NWS meteorologist, said the January 2022 blizzard, which walloped Long Island, “would be the last time we had more than a half foot of snow” at the Islip site. However, a winter storm earlier this month led to public readings around 8 inches in parts of Suffolk County, he said.
Elsewhere in Suffolk, Ridge got 8 inches, Babylon and Orient got 7½ inches of accumulation, as reported at 10 a.m.
A measurement in Farmingdale hit 5 inches — the highest in Nassau County, as of 9:54 a.m. In Syosset, a spotter counted 4.6 inches, while totals reached 4.1 inches in Malverne and Massapequa.
Forecasters said snow is expected to taper off Saturday morning, though temperatures will remain frigid throughout the day before falling well below freezing at night.
A Suffolk police department spokesman said there were significantly more motor vehicle crashes overnight Friday than is typical, but the department did not immediately have a total count Saturday morning.
A Nassau police spokeswoman said that between 6 p.m. Friday and 6 a.m. Saturday there were 58 motor vehicle crashes. She could not immediately say whether that total is higher than usual.
The spokeswoman also did not have a breakdown of the severity of the crashes, but told Newsday she had not received any incident reports that would typically accompany severe or otherwise notable accidents.
The Island experienced "minimal scattered outages across the service territory" from the storm, according to Elizabeth Flagler, a PSEG Long Island spokeswoman.
In Manorville, heavy snow brought down wires on Carter Road, causing an outage that briefly affected about 187 customers, Flagler said. The outage was resolved by around 9:30 a.m., according to the company's outage map.
Sarra Sounds Off Ep 36: Champs crowned in lax and flag football On the latest episode of "Sarra Sounds Off," Gregg talks with Michael Sicoli and Tess Ferguson about county champs crowned in boys and girls lacrosse, and Jared Valuzzi reports on the Long Island flag football championship.
