Comparative Winters : New York City Is Colder Than Amsterdam

     Some people who hear my praises of Amsterdam in summertime doubt how nice it is in winter.  They assume that if it's cooler than New York in summer, it's also colder in winter.  They assume that because it is north of New York on a higher latitude (of 12-degrees), that it is frigid.  They are wrong.  New York City has more bitter coldness in winter and hotter muggy humidity in summer than the Netherlands.  See the facts from this winter:

November 7, 2019

November 10

Here's a quick video about November 12 being frigidly cold.

(It got so windy, the weather app mislabeled it as a tornado!)

November 13

(Notice the windchill temperature "feels like 15"!)

A memory of November 15, the previous year, to prove that such a pattern is not new.

November 27 got warmer but with poor air quality.

December 1 brought a sleet storm.

December 2

December 3 had snow, and December 5 was...

 

December 11 brought more snow.

December 15

December 17, but notice the rainy windchill of 25-degrees!

December 18 was so icy, it cancelled Christmas Carols at St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue!  What a shame!

December 19 felt like SINGLE DIGITS!

December 20 felt like 20-degrees!

(It still had ice falling through into the subway.)

December 23 finally exceeded Amsterdam but with unhealthy air quality.

Our friend visited Amsterdam for Christmas.  Here is his comment.

January 1, 2020 - New Year's Eve was morbidly frigid.  Does it seem fun for a celebration?  Think of all the tourists who paid to stay in NYC for that holiday and waited outside for several hours in dirty Times Square to watch a ball drop 1o'.

January 8 (Notice the windchill temperature).

January 13: freezing temperatures ruptured a (typically) outdated water pipe by Lincoln Center's posh neighborhood.   It stopped two major traffic thoroughfares of Broadway and Columbus Avenue, and it disabled several subway lines.

It's like a city in a third-world country.

Typical of the unresponsive/unprepared city government and Transit Authority, it was not fixed for days!

Yes, the new year brought things that aren't new for New York.  On November 3, another water main pipeline burst in Crown Heights.

Such things happen in NYC throughout the year.  One year earlier, a major water pipe burst in April!  Nothing ever prompts the authorities to prevent more problems.

January 17 (again, notice the windchill = 11-degrees!)

January 18 brought more snow.

January 21 had colder windchill.

January 24 matched Amsterdam, but again with bad air.

February 2 temperature dropped so fast in one day, and many people got sick.

February 8 grew colder.

February 14 dropped into the teens!  That made going out for Valentines Day very uncomfortable.  Nobody wanted to wait on "above ground" subway platforms or walk through city canyons of skyscrapers.

February 16

February 20

February 22, even Amsterdam at night is warmer than NYC in the daytime!

February 27 was so windy, I took a quick video.

March 3 - Amsterdam declared that winter was ending!

March 7

March 12

March 16 - windchill = 28-degrees!

March 22 (predicted snow flurries that didn't happen)



(but see how March 22 was in 2018 with snow!)






March 23 (rainy day that felt like 30-degrees)

     Lewis and I would much rather experience a Dutch wintertime than a bundled-up frigid one in NYC, surrounded by coughing/sick people on overcrowded/delayed subways and in non-sanitized public places.  When your gloved fingers get numb carrying groceries home, it's not fun.  When it's so cold that the MTA's antiquated signals fail and delay dozens of subway trains (while passengers wait in outdoor stations for 20-40 minutes), it's terrible.  After all, we must submit our taxes on time (at this time of year), but our tax-paid officials don't do their responsibilities on time.  When apartment buildings run out of heating oil, it doesn't make things better.  When FedEx doesn't want to make deliveries and merely dumps everyone's packages at a local store that acts as a "retrieving station", it's not fun to bundle up and trudge to get them in the whipping windchill.  Temperature affects quality of life in many more ways, too.

     Even springtime in New York can be plagued with windy cold air and snowfall at Easter.  The last few months of April had blustery wind gusts exceeding 50-miles-per-hour!

So, when we say how great the seasons are in the Netherlands, you'll understand that truth.

To see comparatives summertimes, go here:

https://halfwindsorfullthrottle.blogspot.com/2020/08/comparative-summertimes.html