The City Drinks Seven More Inches
Central Park's rain gauge, read daily since 1869, now collects 50.5" a year — up 7.4" from the 1870s-90s — and it's arriving in fewer, harder bursts.
The umbrella is having a busier century. New York's annual rainfall has climbed from 43.1" in the 1870s-90s to 50.5" in recent years — an extra 7.4" landing on the same five boroughs.
That's the average. The record book is wider. The wettest year on record was 1983, at 80.6"; the driest was 1965, at 26.1" — a single dataset holding both a flood and a drought.
The single worst day still belongs to the 1800s. On September 23, 1882, the park gauge caught 8.28" in one day — more rain than some months see, dropped in twenty-four hours.
The more telling number is the rhythm. Days dropping 1"+ of rain — a downpour, not a drizzle — have risen from 10.7 a year in 1870-1899 to 13.6 recently. Roughly three more hard days annually.
Read those two trends together and the verdict isn't just "wetter." The same extra water is arriving in fewer, heavier bursts — the kind that overruns drains rather than soaking lawns.
Snow keeps its own ledger, and it broke recently: the snowiest single day on record is 27.3", on January 23, 2016. The newest extreme, not the oldest.
The stakes sit in that gap between 10.7 and 13.6. Three more inch-plus days a year is three more chances for a storm-drain system built for the 43.1" city to meet the 50.5" one.