Heat Wave

Unlike a lot of other weather conditions, heat waves are easy to see coming. Modern weather forecasting is quite good and I’m writing this on Sunday knowing that it will be getting steadily hotter through Friday and that even after the high-temperature peak passes, the lows will remain high for some time. Given that I like cold weather, it sounds unpleasant.

It’s worth a moment to see where NYC falls on the scale of unpleasant weather. For example, we have 49 inches of rain per year average, compared to 39 inches in Seattle and 23 inches in London. The difference is that we get heavy downpours and sunny days rather than having a lot of overcast and drizzle. Which is better is a matter of personal taste, I guess.

I feel like the most apt comparison for New York is Amsterdam seeing as how we will soon be celebrating the 400^th anniversary of the founding of Nieuw Amsterdam. So, first, 30 inches of rain annually there. The more interesting comparison is in the monthly high and low temperatures (perceived temperatures shown dashed):

New York’s mid-summer lows are about the same as Amsterdam’s mid-summer highs; NYC’s winters are colder.

We have much more annoying summers, in terms of the possibility of heat and humidity being perceived as “muggy”:

Roughly the same chance of precipitation on any given day, despite the much greater total rainfall in NYC:

But a better chance of clear skies in NYC.

The easy way to sum it up is that our weather is more extreme, despite similar annual average temperatures. The east coast of North America, unlike northern Europe, does not benefit from the mellowing effects of the Gulf Stream. There are two other issues about New York’s weather: first, because of the dominance of public transit in the city and particularly in Manhattan, New Yorkers are out in the weather more than people in the US on average. And second, and perhaps the key to everything I’ve said above, New Yorkers like to complain about the weather.