These images and data show a comparison of summer heat between New York City and Amsterdam. (It's for people who doubt how hot/humid NYC is, or who complain about spontaneous rain in the Netherland).
July 17 had a prediction of 90-degrees...
...but it actually reached a scorching 95-degrees!
July 21 was hotter in NYC than Los Angeles, California!
While Amsterdam was cooly in the 70s: perfect weather.
July 22 registered at 91, but it felt like 99!
Meanwhile, Amsterdammers savored this...
July 25
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*These are summer temperatures from 2020.
June 5
But NYC had high humidity.
Note: Whenever www.weather.com's inaccurate computers sense humidity in NY, they incorrectly activate a thunderstorm icon. The problem has persisted for years. It makes it challenging to plan your activities when you cannot differentiate humidity with a chance of a downpour. Yet, the weather service doesn't care to remedy that.
June 6 at midnight, the humidity increased, rain fell, but no thunderstorms came.
June 7 was cloudy yet remained stifling with humidity.
June 8 forecast was entirely for sunshine, yet several sun-showers occurred (without being on the hour-by-hour forecast). Clearly, the Dutch version of hour-by-hour weather prediction is more accurate.
June 9 brought a heat wave!
Watch the short video below.
The air quality was not good. To disguise the statistics of its bad air quality, NYC has multiple tiers of "bad air quality"... implying that "it was bad but not the worst possible". Is that comforting?
June 11 - the heat dissipated, and a passing rain dampened the city at 4PM.
June 22 - heat built up again to 87 degrees.
Watch the short video below.
The air quality was not good. To disguise the statistics of its bad air quality, NYC has multiple tiers of "bad air quality"... implying that "it was bad but not the worst possible". Is that comforting?
June 11 - the heat dissipated, and a passing rain dampened the city at 4PM.
June 22 - heat built up again to 87 degrees.
(Even Singapore was cooler than New York City!)
June 26 put both cities side-by-side.
June 28 had a big disparity, with flashes of hot thundershowers in NYC, while breeziness refreshed Amsterdam.
June 29 gave more "passing" thunderstorms. However, they arrived prematurely (due to inaccurate so-called "by the hour" weather predictions) at 1:30 PM, and Lewis was stranded inside the supermarket until the rain paused. He got home before the downpour started again.
July 2 featured thunder/lighting storms for half of the day.
July 3 felt like 92-degrees (as seen in the bottom of the image), with more lighting storms, while Amsterdam was breezily in the mid-60s.
July 4 commemorates American Independence Day. The American president avoided an appearance during the festivities in the nation's capital: Washington D.C. For its celebrations of Liberation Day, Remembrance Day, and the King's Birthday, Amsterdam's orchestras made concerts via simultaneous "stay at home" videos (like this)...
It was tremendously festive. In contrast, America's wealthier but uncaring system merely played videos of musicians from previous years.
July 5 was hot.
This short video displays that week's forecast. Turn the sound on.
July 7 was cooler but with scattered thundershowers and "unhealthy air quality" for NYC.
July 10 delivered more rain.
It was also coupled with a typical malfunction of the MTA subway. However, it was a new excuse: a fallen lamppost. Since it's an elevated subway, there are no lampposts taller than the rails; they're all under the trestles. It was probably one of their own lampposts on the station platforms that they installed poorly. After waiting 30 minutes, Lewis was forced to change routes, take a different train, and walk twice the distance (in the rain) to get to my home.
July 12 caused NYC temperature to jump 10-degrees.
July 14 - Manhattan experienced a typical passing downpour = "scattered showers". It's just like Miami, and less harsh than the momentary drizzles in the Netherlands.
July 17 - the humidity rose to match the heat.
July 18
NYC's local (insufficient yet overpriced) electricity provider, Consolidated Edison, sent an alert:
It's disgraceful that the biggest city in America depends on corrupt, inefficient, substandard power plants. Despite the growing population and increasing costs for electricity, ConEd fails to improve infrastructure in NYC. Throughout my 40 years living in New York (America), summertime life suffered from electrical failures, outages, and blackouts. They were worse on Long Island, because LILCO has a monopoly and doesn't care to improve itself... nor does the overpaid government insist on it. According to our friends in sultry Taiwan, they don't suffer as much from such inadequacies. Since 1984, the Dutch system only failed 8 times. But in pricier NYC, it happens every single year!
ConEd--which is creative at conning people--finds new ways to mask its failures. Nowadays, they say that "heat impacted service", instead of announcing that their crappy system had a power outage. NYC--which hungrily desires new tenants, taxpayers, and tourists--finds strategic ways to reword such failures so they don't scare away the newcomers. Thus, "power disruptions" really mean a blackout. In this short video, the blackout on July 19--which impacted 4 neighborhoods--was referred to as a mere "reduction in service". 6,000 (overpaying) customers endured the oppressive heat, until power was slowly restored, during the next THREE DAYS. As usual, affected customers never get a refund for that time.
July 20 became hotter in NYC than in Miami Florida!
NYC was hotter than other cities on the same latitude.
July 22 offered rainy relief but unhealthy air.
July 23 felt hotter than 90-degrees again.
July 26 & 27 - ambient temperature crested over 95!
Even near midnight, NYC was hotter than Florida.
July 31 - at the end of the month, Amsterdam topped NYC
By August 2, that anomaly was finished.
August 3 - heat soared in NYC to feel like 91.
August 4 - With its Dutch-inspired flags, NYC feebly prepared for Hurricane Season.
According to friends on Long Island, it took SIX DAYS to restore electricity, due to fallen electrical poles. During that week, food spoiled in their refrigerators, and they used candles/lanterns at night. Despite being 2020, such poor infrastructure is indicative of NY/America's uncaring. Knowing that they have a monopoly on the island, the L.I. Power Authority doesn't maintain a great system.
Meanwhile, things were sunny and cool in Amsterdam
August 6 brought flash floods to the area, which NYC hasn't bothered preparing against, since Hurricane Sandy of 2012.
August 10 baked Amsterdam, but it scorched NYC at 97.
By then, it was an ENTIRE WEEK since the tropical storm, and ConEd still had not restored power for 4,300 citizens. Considering ConEd's electricity rate increase for 2020, newscasters showed clients demanding refunds. "All talk but no action" politicians (like the governor and mayor) said the same thing as last year, "This has to change; it's unacceptable".
Read about last year's huge power outage, go here:
https://halfwindsorfullthrottle.blogspot.com/2019/07/power-to-people.html
August 12 - Lewis and I started the day enjoying online videos of Grachtenfestival in Amsterdam. It kept us upbeat and hopeful of our relocation as soon as possible.
Feeling like 94-degrees, the day erupted into thunderstorms.
August 16 - the unusual switch of temperatures continued. The Dutch called it their longest heatwave in recent history.
August 17 - both cities were neck-and-neck in the 70s
August 21 - by the end of the week, NYC exceeded Amsterdam (the brief Dutch heatwave officially ended).
August 22 - NYC sizzled again, feeling like the 90s.
Unbearable heat was blamed for another uptick in NYC crime and murders. The statistics in this video are unbelievable (elsewhere in the world).
August 24 - a "hot, sticky, and muggy" forecast for NYC
Meanwhile, when the Dutch thermometer says 69, it means 69 (a favorite number for Lewis and I... Ha ha!)
August 25 - began with intense mugginess and temperatures at 95-degrees. Merely carrying groceries to my apartment made our bodies achieve beads of sweat.
Lewis and I got a friend to help us move my old sofa downstairs to the curb for garbage removal. It was so hot and humid that the air in the stairwell felt like a sauna. Moments after we finished, strong gusts of wind blew dust, sand, and debris (since NYC is laden with litter/trash) through the streets. We prevented our hats from blowing away and wiped sand out of our eyes. When the wind died down, we walked to a local restaurant for outdoor (COVID laws in NYC prohibited indoor dining) dining. Without warning—and while the sun still shone—a downpour of rain occurred. The mini-monsoon lasted for 20 minutes!
Thankfully, we ducked under the awning of another building. Even better, when it ended, we had a miraculously cool/breezy night to enjoy dinner in! Clearly, NYC has changeable weather like the Netherlands. The unseasonable coolness lasted for another day. I relished in being able to keep windows open and air conditioners off for a day in August! I felt like an Amsterdammer...
Alas, August 27 resumed the oppressive heat at 94-degrees.
In the evening, the New York City sky rapidly darkened with ominous foreboding of a sudden storm. Hurrying to my apartment from his commute, Lewis saw it blacken within minutes! (He ran while taking the second picture).
Then, another deluge soaked the area. Luckily, he entered my apartment building before the torrential downpour--replete with lighting and thunder.
Even at 9 PM at night, the temperature still felt like 92!
August 28 was practically 90 degrees.
That night, it seems like there was so much heat that the Con Edison Steam System vented a billow of steam into the NYC air! The ruckus lasted two minutes, sounding like an ongoing rumble of thunder.
It happened last year, too.
August 30 - the upcoming forecast showed disparity. After three months of such heat, we looked longingly at coolness.
The first week of September was unpleasantly humid. By Saturday, the humidity dipped, but the heat was still near 90-degrees!
September 8 - by now, the evenings were getting darker earlier (a sign of autumn's approach), yet the heat didn't want to dissipate! It felt like 85-degrees, and my hot apartment registered at 87 when I got home.
September 10 was "soupy": steamy and humid with rain.
Disgustingly, the day progressed to feel like 87-degrees.
September 23 reached 80 degrees.
Hopefully October won't be like 2019! We pray for coolness.
You must remember that commuters suffer in NYC's subterranean subway stations. Thanks to Manhattan's underground antiquated steam heating system, the subway tunnels are sweltering with extra heat.
Thanks to its congestion, pollution, and antiquated power generators, NYC is also an Urban Heat Island (UHI)--raising the ambient heat by an additional 22-degrees. The UHI also deprives the area of cool relief at night.
So, if the temperature is 90, and the heat index makes it feel like 95, then the subway and UHI is 100+!
Such a hellish experience is ignored by politicians. The costs of living in NYC continue to increase.
Therefore, people cringe when a potential Indian Summer is predicted. An Indian Summer is an unseasonably warm condition in autumn... as if the heat will no let go.
To see comparative winters and realize that NYC still has worse weather than Amsterdam, go here:
To prove that my summertime comparison was not an isolated incident, please use this link to see my companions of NYC to London--done two years later. It will astound you.
