#Winter Storm Gail piled more snow on NYC than all last winter

Winter Storm Gail dumped more snow on the Big Apple overnight than the city saw in all of last winter, weather experts said Thursday morning. 

A total of 6.5 inches of snow and sleet was reported as of midnight in Central Park, the New York City branch of the National Weather Service tweeted. That’s compared to a mere 4.8 inches for the entire 2019-2020 winter season. 

Between 6 and 10 inches fell across the city as of around 6:15 a.m. before the heaviest snowfall tapered off and changed into more of a wintry mix, according to Accuweather meteorologist Isaac Longley. 

“Last winter was a very mild winter and we really didn’t see any of those major winter storms, those nor’easters,” Longley told The Post.

“So a lot of locations, including New York City, did not really see a lot of snowfall at all. It was a record-breaking year in terms of low snowfall amounts.”

So since the bar for snow was set so low last year, Longley said “it’s not completely surprising that we can get more than that in one storm this year, especially a storm of this magnitude.”

The “impressive” storm was “mostly what we expected for the city,” Longley said — though the totals north of the five boroughs exceeded the initial forecast, he said. 

“Since this storm ended up tracking farther north than previously expected, the higher snowfall totals were seen farther north of the city,” he said.

“So pretty much the further you go up the Lower Hudson Valley, that’s where you saw the higher totals of 8 to locally 16 inches of snowfall at this point.”

The five boroughs aren’t expected to see much more snow Thursday morning — a dusting to an inch at most — though the region surrounding Poughkeepsie could still see 3 to 6 more inches, according to Longley. 

But while the worst of the storm is over, morning commuters in the city “could still see some slick spots out there,” Longley said. 

And by 9 or 10 a.m., the precipitation that began as heavy, wet flakes will be reduced to “mainly wandering flurries,” he said. By noon, it will likely taper off entirely. 

At the height of the storm Wednesday night, a handful of New Yorkers took advantage of the first snowfall of the season — some enjoying snowball fights and another man even walking around with skis and ski poles in the middle of Times Square. 

Temperatures — sitting in the low-to-mid 20s early Thursday, are expected to rise to 30 degrees by 10 or 11 a.m. and then plummet back down to the high 20s by the afternoon, Longley said. 

But it will feel “pretty brisk out there” — more like the single digits — with the wind chill factored in, he said.