No Snow January
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 15 seconds
My backyard and New York City have gone three hundred twenty-five (325) days since the last measurable snowstorm.
The latest day for the first snow was fifty years ago today.
According to the Gothamist, “50-year-old record for the latest arriving measurable snowfall for a winter season, set on Jan. 29, 1973. If the pattern lasts beyond Feb. 4, it’ll be the longest recorded period the city has gone without snow.”
I was living in Brooklyn in 1973 when that storm arrived. I danced on the St. John’s Rectory stoop, pleading for the snow to come.
The following winter, Jan explained that as a child, she would wear her pajamas inside out to ensure that she had a snow day.
Fifty years later, I do not do a snow dance, but I have also grown to miss winter’s gift.
Walking in the winter is easier without snow or ice.
However, we play chicken with mother nature if we do not have snow.
How long will we wait for snow?
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
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Enduring the Ice, Cold, and Snow
It was a week after Jan died, and I needed to clear my head and focus on how to share her love and slowly build a life without her.
I am a stranger in this new world that I inhabit.
I did not choose to be here, but I am.
Dusting of Snowflakes
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 15 secondsAfter three hundred twenty-eight days, Central Park received a half-inch of snow. In my front yard, we only had a dusting. The first of February is still the latest day for recorded snow.
However, as Emma Marris writes in “The Weekly Planet,” we are still in a climate emergency.
Ms. Marris is “a longtime environmental writer with a particular interest in making sense of the ‘demi-Armageddon’: that messy middle ground where we’re already suffering the effects of climate change and widespread biodiversity loss but also beginning to take some action to avoid the most catastrophic futures.”
