Good morning. It's Friday. Today we'll find out how one kind of snowflake was overhauled and why it has been 655 days — and counting — since a substantial amount of another kind of snowflake was seen in Central Park. |
 | | Jason DeCrow/Associated Press |
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This newsletter is about a snowflake that has had a little cosmetic work done. |
It's not a snowflake that dances down from the sky, shimmering like a diamond in the pale wintry light, only to melt after morphing into grimy slush. This snowflake shimmers from 50 feet up. It is the giant illuminated snowflake that floats over the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. |
"It needed to be refreshed," said George Stonbely, the advertising entrepreneur who oversees the snowflake. |
So its 16,500 crystal light fixtures were cleaned. More than 600 double-sided miniature LEDs were installed, tripling the number on the side branches. The halogen lights around the steel-and-chrome core were replaced with projection LEDs. And the core was polished. |
"It's still the same beautiful shape and structure that it was when it was designed in the early 2000s," Stonbely said. |
But now the snowflake has razzle-dazzle. After it is turned on for the season on Sunday afternoon, there will be light shows for a couple of minutes at the beginning of each hour, Stonbely said. |
The all-LED configuration made the snowflake programmable in ways that were not possible before, when it was limited to on and off — and only one color, white. "We want to introduce color slowly and not make it like what I've done in Times Square," said Stonbely, who put more than 60 Spectacolor signs there and in other places around the world, starting in the 1970s. "This is more subtle." |
As in past years, the snowflake will be anchored from the four buildings on the corners, suspended and stabilized by cables. The snowflake was designed to withstand wind and rain, as well as the buildup of ice. |
And the power-generating electricity? Stonbely said that comes from one of the four buildings. |
The snowflake is the second to occupy the spot. The original was willed to Stonbely by Douglas Leigh, another creator of attention-getting displays. Leigh was behind famous installations in Midtown, like the smoking Camel sign in Times Square, the Super Suds detergent sign with 3,000 "floating" soap bubbles, and a 120-foot Pepsi-Cola waterfall above a clothing store. |
Stonbely said that Leigh apparently got the idea for the snowflake when he saw cables across an intersection in Switzerland, with lights that looked like icicles. "He saw that and he thought about, instead of the icicles, what if we put a giant snowflake?" Stonbely said. |
Leigh died in 1999 at 92, 15 years after the snowflake became an end-of-the-year regular on Fifth Avenue. Leigh willed the snowflake to Stonbely, who transferred ownership to a foundation and dedicated it to UNICEF, which he said had raised more than $65 million over the years through the annual Snowflake Ball. Now the foundation has licensed the snowflake to a new nonprofit that will raise money for humanitarian organizations and arts groups. Stonbely has worked with the Fifth Avenue Association to line up donors to support the refurbishment and installation of the snowflake. |
There will be jazz performers and food vendors against a backdrop of 150 fir trees along the sidewalks. Passers-by will have something to smell as they look up at the snowflake: The trees are scented. |
Prepare for possible rain through the evening, with temps in the low 50s. Late at night, there's a chance of light rain and temps in the mid-40s. |
In effect until Dec. 8 (Immaculate Conception). |
 | | Kenny Holston/The New York Times |
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- House debate: The House of Representatives began a reinvigorated debate on whether to expel Representative George Santos. The vote, expected on Friday, will be the third attempt to expel him.
- Santos responds: Santos went on the attack in a news conference, assailing fellow lawmakers he perceived as having betrayed him, and threatening retaliation.
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- New Jersey officials respond: The first peek at pricing details in New York's plan to add tolls for drivers entering Manhattan's busiest streets drew strong responses in New Jersey.
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- A brief explanation: From the cost of tolls to how the M.T.A. will track cars, here's what to know about congestion pricing.
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- Trump trial: An appeals court reinstated a gag order barring Donald Trump from attacking court staff in his civil fraud trial.
- Murder-for-hire plot: A federal indictment said that an Indian government official had tried to have a hit man kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Sikh separatist, in New York City. Pannun said he was not surprised by the plot against him.
- Aiding mentally ill homeless people: New York City has helped some of the most severely mentally ill homeless people, the mayor said, adding that more needed to be done to reach all those on the streets.
- Kissinger's New York past: After fleeing Nazi Germany, the family of Henry Kissinger landed in Washington Heights, in a two-bedroom rental where he and his brother slept in the living room.
- What we're watching: Matthew Haag, a Metro reporter, explains the city's conversion of unused office space into housing. And an editor on the Obituary desk, Amisha Padnani, discusses "Overlooked," her book and series dedicated to noteworthy women and people of color whose deaths did not initially receive a Times obituary. The two appear on "The New York Times Close Up With Sam Roberts," which airs at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. [CUNY TV].
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It has been a while since Central Park looked like this |
 | | Andres Kudacki for The New York Times |
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On the subject of snowflakes — real snowflakes: |
Central Park hasn't recorded a major snowfall since Feb. 13 of last year. And it has been 655 days — and counting — since an inch of snow was measured there in a single day, almost double the previous record of 383 days, which ended in March 1998. |
Only 2.3 inches of snow fell in Central Park in all of last winter, the smallest amount recorded there since record-keeping began in 1869. |
One snowstorm that began on Feb. 27 did have a two-day total of almost two inches, but because daily records are recorded from midnight to midnight, less than an inch fell each day, keeping the less-than-an-inch streak going. In a normal winter, Central Park sees nearly 24 inches of snow through the season. |
Luisana Perez, 28, said that while walking through the park on Wednesday, she remembered snow piling up as high as parked cars when she was a child in Harlem. But last year — when temperatures topped 60 between Christmas Day and New Year's Day — she needed only a single layer, and even then she was sweaty. |
"I'm witnessing the city slowly getting warmer and warmer," she said. "It doesn't feel very Christmassy." |
What about this year? It's probably a matter of when, not if, snow will accumulate in the park. James Tomasini, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, does not expect the snowless streak to last through the winter. |
Storm systems that affect New York City typically have a warmer side and a colder one. If the storm tracks up the coast but too far inland — as most of last year's storms did — New York ends up on the warmer side of the storm, and less snow falls. This phenomenon can happen more frequently when the overall weather pattern is dictated by La Niña, which pushes the jet stream northward. |
This year, the winter season is starting with something different — an El Niño pattern — and that could affect whether snow comes to New York. During El Niño winters, there tends to be an increase in the number of coastal storms that form off the East Coast. A storm track to the southeast of New York over the ocean is favorable, Tomasini said, because then the city will be on the colder side of the storm. |
I was on a crowded southbound No. 1 train riding from Riverdale to Midtown. Standing across from me was a young woman with long curly hair and long synthetic nails. |
I watched her out of the corner of my eye, as she tried to open a can of soda. Her nails rendered the act impossible. |
After she made about five tries, a middle-aged man standing next to her, who had also been watching her out of the corner of his eye, silently took the can from her hands, opened it and handed it back. |
Glad we could get together here. See you on Monday. — J.B. |
Melissa Guerrero, Claire Fahy and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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