It’s Cold and Ugly

Well, New York City is having a cold and ugly February. As I sit in my Phoenix office at NextStudent with the sun shining through the window and 70-degree temps, I don’t regret moving home. I’ve been reading and hearing from old friends about how cold it’s been in New York. It’s also gotten some snow. The temperatures are in the 20s, but the wind chill factor is bringing those temps down to the single digits. I do not miss it at all.

With the cold, snow and people, I remember what that means in New York, and it’s not good.

When it first snows anywhere, it’s a beautiful thing. Especially in New York. When it snows, it’s really the only time the city gets quiet. The sounds of the city become muffled and there’s beautiful snow falling. But it doesn’t last long.

If you put a huge city together with snow, tons of cars, buses and taxis and millions of people walking everywhere, you get a mess! And, it gets real ugly, real fast. Slush, mud, ice, wind, people bundled up so much that sometimes they barely resemble people.

People throughout the city look less happy, as they walk stiffly because they barely can move in their layers and bundled winter clothes. They also typically are rushing to get wherever, and get out of the cold.

This also is the time when people slip and fall and bad accidents happen. Ice on the sidewalks or under snow is the culprit. It’s pretty scary. So not only are people walking to get out of the cold, they are trying to walk so that they don’t have an accident.

Winters can be strange in New York City. You can have days when the weather is mild and sometimes even in the 60s or 70s one day. The next day the temperatures can drop to the 30s and snow starts falling. I could never get used to the wacky weather there.

Yeah, it gets hot here, but I don’t mind. I don’t have to worry about slipping on the ice or shoveling the snow.