Autumn in New York Has Been One of the City’s Driest Ever

On Saturday, Sarah Antebi, a 19-year-old sophomore at Barnard and Columbia, paused for a moment while running through Central Park to take in the fall foliage at the lake. It’s unusually resplendent for this time of year, with many of the trees just starting to turn orange and yellow.

Like many New Yorkers, she was torn between enjoying the sight and feeling a sense of unease at how unusually warm and dry autumn has felt this year.

“All my friends are like, ‘We just want it to be fall,’” she said. “We just want to wear our sweaters.”

October is historically a fairly dry month, but the city has never quite seen an October like this. As of Tuesday morning, Central Park had gone 29 days without measurable rain, the second-longest dry streak in records that date back to 1869, Bill Goodman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in New York confirmed. If no rain falls before midnight on Halloween, October would be the driest calendar month in the city’s history.

And if the city makes it all the way through Election Day without measurable rain — something forecasts suggest is likely — it will beat the current record for a dry streak: 36 days, set in October and November 1924.

(For rain to be considered measurable, the rain gauge at Belvedere Castle in Central Park must detect one-hundredth of an inch or more. The last time it did that was Sept. 29, when 0.78 of an inch fell.)