This morning was Long Island's first autumn freeze
The growing season has officially ended on Long Island, and it turns out it's been much longer in recent years.
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Long Island has officially dropped below freezing for the first time this season. Temperatures at Islip, where the National Weather Service official observations are kept, dropped to 30F. It's the official end to the growing season which started a week earlier than average this year, on April 4 and ended on time. Although this growing season was near average, the trend in recent years has shifted toward warmer weather and a longer growing season on Long Island.
The 2022 growing season was the 4th longest on the Island. It started in March and ended in mid-November. The top 5 longest growing seasons in Islip have happened in the past 30 years. The longest growing on record was in 2016 which began in mid April and lasted until the end of November.
Records for Islip start in 1964, but the longer growing season trend has also been noted in Central Park which has records that date back to the 1800s. In Central Park, the longest growing season was in 2015. The growing season that year started in late March and ended in January of the following year.
The "growing season" here is defined as the stretch of time where temperatures remain at or above 32F.
