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FYI, ts.....
Includes the Counties: Orange County
Coastal Areas
Today...Mostly sunny. Highs 60 to 65. Light winds.
Tuesday...Partly cloudy. A 20 percent chance of showers in the
afternoon. Highs 61 to 67. Light winds.
Wednesday...Partly cloudy. Slight chance of showers in the morning.
Highs 61 to 67.
Thursday...Mostly sunny. Highs 62 to 68.
Friday...Mostly sunny. Highs 62 to 68.
Saturday...Mostly sunny. Highs 63 to 69.
Sunday...Mostly sunny. Highs 65 to 71.
METROPOLITAN DESK | August 15, 2003, Friday
A Perfect Summer, if You're a Fungus; Record Rainfall
Transforms City Into a Wonderland of Mushrooms
By JAMES BARRON (NYT) 788 words
Late Edition - Final , Section B , Page 1 , Column 1
ABSTRACT - Wet summer in New York leads to explosion in growth of
mushrooms and ferns; some mushrooms are edible variety but experts advise
against eating them; photos (M)
January 26, 2004
So How Cold Is It in New York City?
Just Ask This Native
Icelander
By ROBERT F. WORTH
Petur Oskarsson knows all about cold. He is
from Iceland, where reindeer wander the tundra and
icebergs drift on the horizon.
But yesterday, as he walked among the swaddled and whimpering pedestrians
of Midtown Manhattan, he
seemed thoroughly impressed by the local weather.
"I've never in my life been as cold as I am here in New York," he said,
raising his eyebrows and pulling
his fleece headgear a little tighter.
It is not that it doesn't sometimes get much colder in parts of Iceland,
said Mr. Oskarsson, who has
spent four years working in New York as the trade commissioner at the
Icelandic Consulate General.
Even by New York standards, the recent temperatures in the city have
not, for the most part, been
record-breakers.
What is unusual is for the cold to last this long.
"We just don't get this kind of cold for three weeks at a time in Reykjavik,"
Mr. Oskarsson said of the
Icelandic capital, his home.
New York's temperatures have been below the usual January lows of 22
or 23 degrees Fahrenheit every
day since Jan. 6, said Paul Knight, a meteorologist at Penn State University.
That is a longer cold snap
than New York has had since 1994, and before that, one has to go back
to 1977 and 1978 for a similar
stretch of harsh weather, Mr. Knight said.
Thanks to the ice in the streets, alternate-side parking rules have
been suspended for a week and are
expected to be suspended again today, said Tom Cocola, a spokesman
for the New York City
Department of Transportation.
The temperature is expected to rise into the 30's this week, with some
snowfall today and Tuesday, Mr.
Knight said.
In practical terms, the extended cold has meant that New Yorkers cannot
simply stay inside, cursing and
waiting out the weather for a day or two. The fact that it was 14 degrees
in Central Park at noon
yesterday might once have seemed a freakish aberration. Now it has
become the norm.
To give an Icelandic view of the cold, Mr. Oskarsson agreed to tour
the streets of Midtown yesterday
with a reporter. He was dressed in his standard winter gear: fleece
hat, black Icelandic shell over two
layers of fleece, ski gloves and long johns under his blue jeans.
"People talk constantly about the weather in Iceland," Mr. Oskarsson,
a blond, rosy-cheeked man of 35,
said as he passed a digital sign on Sixth Avenue about 2:30 p.m. that
said the temperature was 16
degrees. "As a fishing community, it was always a huge part of people's
lives."
In that sense, New York has begun to follow suit. It is hard to walk
a block without hearing a few
soliloquies about the cold.
Despite its name, Iceland is not all that cold, at least not in Reykjavik,
where most of its roughly
300,000 people live. The Gulf Stream keeps temperatures in the 30's
most of the winter, Mr. Oskarsson
said.
New York, by contrast, does not have an icy reputation. To some tourists
who ventured outdoors
yesterday, that has become a sore point.
"I've been here three days, and I've never been so cold," Lee Chapman,
a visitor from London, said as
he stood shivering near the skating rink at Rockefeller Center, with
only a thin wool hat and no gloves.
"We would've gone walking in Central Park, but instead we've mostly
been sitting in bars and coffee
shops."
His companion and fellow Londoner, Emma Robertson, agreed. "Now, if
people ask me what is the
coldest place I've ever been, I'll have to say New York City," she
said.
The weather is hardest on those who work outdoors. Ibrahim Ahmed, who
mans a kebab cart on 50th
Street and Sixth Avenue, hovered yesterday near his grill, his back
protected from the wind by a white
canvas sheet. He had been out since 6:30 a.m. and was not going home
until 5 p.m.
"The worst thing in this business is your feet," he said, glancing down
at his heavy black boots. "Your
hands, your chest, you can warm, but my feet are very cold."
He has one secret weapon, he added: his wife, an Eskimo who was born
in Alaska and who advises him
about layers of clothing and socks.
It also helps to maintain some perspective. It may not have been so
cold in Iceland, but it was 18 below
zero yesterday in Deadhorse, on Alaska's northern coast, and on Saturday
night it got down to 40
below. The sun rose just above the horizon around 11 a.m. Alaska time
and set around noon.
That kind of cold can keep people indoors and drive them into depression,
said Monica Millard, who
works at the reception desk at the Prudhoe Bay Hotel in Deadhorse.
But Ms. Millard, reached by phone
yesterday, had a few words of advice for New Yorkers, in the event
that the cold snap lasted any longer.
"Don't let yourself become a recluse," she said. "Bundle up and go outside
and enjoy it."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy
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