New York City finally broke its record-breaking streak of 701 days without significant snowfall on Tuesday, with at least an inch of snow blanketing Central Park since midnight. This ends a nearly two-year dry spell for the Big Apple, and could be the beginning of a snowier winter than last year’s mild season.

As of 7 a.m., 1.4 inches of snow had fallen in Central Park, according to the National Weather Service. The last time the city saw this much snowfall in a single day was on February 13, 2022, when 1.6 inches fell.

“This afternoon is going to freeze pretty hard,” said Dominic Ramunni, a meteorologist for the weather service, warning of potentially tricky conditions for the evening commute. The previous record for the longest stretch without significant snowfall in New York City was 400 days, which ended on March 21, 1998.

The snow was brought by a low-pressure system that moved up from the South on Monday afternoon. The system is expected to move off the coast of North Carolina and South Carolina by Tuesday afternoon or evening.

Central Park typically has about 24 inches of snow over the course of the entire winter. But last year’s mild winter brought, in total, only 2.3 inches of snow, the smallest amount recorded there since record-keeping started in 1869.

“It looks unlikely that the type of winter we had last year would happen again,” said James Tomasini, another meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “There’s already another chance of snow for the end of the week because we’ve been in this active pattern.”