Essay by Eric Worrall
Record breaking cold in China, Russia and Europe doesn’t count, because “sleddable” deep snow hasn’t fallen in New York’s Central Park for 650 days.
Missing the feeling of a white Christmas? That might be solastalgia.
Finally, a term that explains the sadness of a whole season — and a way of life — melting before our eyes.
By Anna North Dec 21, 2023, 7:00am EST
A snowy winter in New York City brings with it a kind of magic. The air goes crisp, then bitter, and fragile snowflakes sift down in the early dark, silvering the trees and blanketing the sledding hills in the parks. After the first big snow, children and adults alike rush out to make snowmen, creations that delight passersby for the next two frigid months, until the snow finally thaws. When I took my older son, then a toddler, out for his first-ever sledding session, he squealed with awe at the crystalline world before him, shouting, “It looks like Frozen!”
Today he’s 5, and I doubt he remembers what sledding feels like. It’s been more than 650 days since Central Park, where snow is measured daily, got more than an inch of snowfall at one time; last winter, the park got just 2.3 inches in total, less than one-tenth the normal amount. In early December, Brooklyn saw a few anemic flurries, and my son told me excitedly that his friends had tried to build a snowman during recess. But there was nowhere near enough material to work with. They settled for “a pile of snowflakes.”
This sense of winter melting away before our eyes is not unique to New York: While blazing-hot summers and stormy autumns come with their own dangers, scientists say winter is actually the fastest-warming season. Snowfall is decreasing across the Northeast, the flakes slowly replaced by raindrops. The Great Lakes have experienced a 22 percent drop in maximum ice cover since 1973, and are frozen for a shorter percentage of the year. In December 2022, Utqiagvik, the northernmost city in Alaska, posted its warmest winter temperature ever at 40 degrees Fahrenheit, a full 36 degrees above the frigid average for that time of year.
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Read more: https://www.vox.com/culture/24001256/snow-winter-climate-change-solastalgia-warming
New York may have enjoyed a few years of mild winters, but other parts of the world stretching from Europe and Russia to China have been experiencing extreme and in some cases record breaking cold, so I suggest the assertion that winter has disappeared is probably a little premature.
In 2012 the VOX reporter who wrote the article above published a novel “America Pacifica“, about political intrigue in the colony of the last survivors of an extreme ice age, a new snowball Earth.
The reporter doesn’t seem to have published any novels about the grim survivors of our coming age of warmer beach weather. Perhaps warm weather isn’t scary enough for a dramatic novel.
I suggest the lady travels a bit.
Don’t worry. The next time NYC gets hit by a blizzard they’ll have an article blaming it on “climate change”. Who knows? Could happen this winter.
A handful of years – or even a few decades – cannot define a trend. I well remember the 70s, a time of horrifically cold and snowy weather. We got married on Jan. 12, 1974 (yes, it’s almost 50 years!), and the day before, a $hitload of snow hit Cleveland. Enough that many people were not able to make it to either the wedding or reception.
All the out of towners did – they were from upstate PA, near the NY border (Snow Belt), and ALL had vehicles more than able to handle the trip.
The cold continued for most of the decade, including the winter of 1977-78, when we were confined to 2 rooms in our house, all others being closed off because of ‘brownouts’ – times of reduced power to our home.
But, by the early 1980s, we were in REALLY hot years. We wore two AC units out completely.
And, so on from them – back and forth, from too hot for extended periods of time, to freezing cold and snowy for many winters.
Each time, accompanied by headlines in newspapers and magazines, about the TERRIBLE Climate Changes, and how they would end in either:
Both scenarios accompanied by dire threats of horrific outcomes, UNLESS the taxpayers came up with a buttload of cash to stave off the catastrophe.
Over and over, decade after decade.
I got off the Doomsday Bus when I became a ham radio operator, and learned about solar cycles. Since then, I’ve seen no need to climb back on the OMG! The World is ENDING! short bus.
I think too many people fall for the Hollywood version of Christmas when those movies always show it snowing at that time of year. I can remember plenty of years throughout my life while living in Connecticut when it didn’t snow at Christmas, more times than it did snow.
And when moist, sleddable snow does fall in New York, … crickets.
Here is southeast Michigan I only had to shovel snow once last year and not at all so far this year. Can’t say I miss it much.
I’ve lived here on Vancouver Island most of my adult life and winter, which started yesterday, is unchanging, cold, wet, foggy and gray. wouldn’t mind a bit of sunshine.
I SEE THE NO SNOW!… Wait. Nope. There is no downward trend, and some record snow falls… how do they get away with blatant lies… wait… nevermind…
650 days ago was March of 2022. So basically all they are saying is, last year there was not much snow.
I recall how back in the 1970’s, one year before the snowiest winter people my age had ever seen in their lives, it did not snow a single flake in Philly the whole Winter.
In fact, the cities along the eastern seaboard of the US have a very long history of occasional snowless Winters.
It is nothing new.
Nothing new whatsoever.
And anyone old enough to have children would know this very well, if they have ever paid attention to such things as annual snowfall.