Event Summary

A coastal low pressure system along the Outer Banks of North Carolina Sunday evening, March 1, tracked northeast, to east of Long Island by Monday afternoon, March 2. At the same time, arctic high pressure, from the upper Midwest to James Bay, was gradually building east. The two combined to produce a heavy snowfall event across the tri-state area with snowfall rates of 2 to 3 inches an hour during the pre-dawn hours of March 2. This was the biggest snowfall event of the winter season. Snowfall amounts across southeast New York generally ranged from 7 to 12 inches, but as high as 16 inches across Suffolk county on eastern Long Island. The following are selected snowfall amounts across the area: 11.2 inches at Tuxedo in the Lower Hudson Valley, 13.0 inches at Great Kills on Staten Island, 8.0 inches at the Central Park Zoo in Manhattan, and 15.7 inches at Mastic on eastern Long Island.'