New York Know
Central Park / 1960–2024 · A Data Story
More Winter Days Get Above Freezing.
A winter average hides the days you actually walk through. Central Park’s daily record shows a shift away from days that never get above freezing, with plenty of variation along the way.
Watch Winter’s Shape Change ↓of cold-season days stayed at or below freezing, even at the day’s warmest point.
The Shape Of A Winter Day
Central Park · December, January and February · Percent of observed days
Daily High Temperature · °F
Each step pools five complete calendar years. The final block is 2020–24; the incomplete 2025–29 block is excluded. The scale stays fixed.
452 valid daily highs · 0 missing or quality-flagged days out of 452 calendar days. December, January and February within these calendar years.
Each interior bin is 5°F wide and excludes its upper edge: 30–35 means at least 30°F but below 35°F. End bins include every value below 10°F or at least 55°F. All valid cold-season days are counted.
02 / What Stands Out
Below Freezing All Day Is Less Common.
In 1960–64, 21.5% of these cold-season days had a high at or below 32°F. In 2020–24, it was 9.1%. That does not mean freezing nights disappeared: this chart measures the day’s high, not its low.
The Shift Hasn’t Been Steady.
Cold spells still interrupt the pattern. In 1975–79, 30.4% of days stayed at or below freezing. Drag through the intervening periods to see the swings rather than treating two endpoints as the whole story.
Check The Numbers
Download Data ↓Open The Data Table
| Below 10 | 0% | 0 |
|---|---|---|
| 10–<15 | 0% | 0 |
| 15–<20 | 0.2% | 1 |
| 20–<25 | 1.1% | 5 |
| 25–<30 | 3.1% | 14 |
| 30–<35 | 9.1% | 41 |
| 35–<40 | 19.9% | 90 |
| 40–<45 | 23% | 104 |
| 45–<50 | 15% | 68 |
| 50–<55 | 11.3% | 51 |
| 55+ | 17.3% | 78 |
Sources & Method
We read TMAX (daily maximum temperature) from NOAA GHCN-Daily station USW00094728, NY CITY CENTRAL PARK. The source stores tenths of a degree Celsius; we convert to Fahrenheit without rounding before assigning five-degree bins. The freezing statistic uses source values at or below 0°C exactly.
Each period contains December, January and February dates whose calendar years fall in that five-year block. These are cold-season days, not five contiguous December-to-February meteorological winters. The final period is 2020–24, so each block contains the same three months across five complete years.
Values marked missing (-9999) or carrying a NOAA quality flag are excluded, and coverage is reported for every period. All 5,867 expected cold-season days in these blocks have valid observations in this extract. No extreme is trimmed; the two open-ended bins retain the tails.
This is an observed single-station record, not an adjusted regional climate series, a weather forecast, or an attribution study. Changes in instruments, station environment, observation practices and weather variability can affect comparisons. The chart does not establish how much of the change has any particular cause.
Source files retrieved 2026-09-09. The download includes source links, file fingerprints and every chart value. Analysis and visualization: New York Know.