New York City Rediscovers Winter,And Not Everybody Is Happy About It

This screen grab of a New York City webcam on Friday 
looked peaceful enough, but some New Yorkers are 
not handling the toughest winter in recent memory
very well. It gets very cold again this weekend. 

Snow and winter cold that just won't go away is driving some New Yorkers batty. 

As many of us know, almost a foot snow and sleet fell on New York City back on January 25 and it has just sat there. Stubbornly. Daring for people to say mean things about it as it turns gray, yellow, slushy and gross. 

Mean things are also being said about the air temperatures, which has been consistently colder than it's been in yeats. 

And those mean things are being said. 

Egged on by the New York Post, a right wing, Murdoch owned publication, New Yorkers, mostly of MAGA ilk are enraged that snow is still narrowing sidewalks, making parking difficult and is just plain nasty to look at, now that it's been sitting around getting dirty for more than a week.

Trash bags are still out there too, as the sanitation department focused on clearing snow, so some trash pickups were delayed.

All that snow I'm sure is frustrating to New Yorkers. But it's mostly really about the Post and MAGA trying to do anything to take leftie Mayor Zohran Mamdani down a peg. Because he's - gasp! a democratic socialist. 

Hizzoner probably hasn't done a perfect job with this winter storm. No mayor would. But from my vantage point, he's done pretty well from what I can see. But what do I know? I'm just a hick from Vermont who has plenty of room to throw snow out of the way if I need to. 

The complaints seem to center on the fact that in past big storms the snow disappeared from the streets pretty quickly after big storms. 

Which is true. 

But the whiners don't seem to understand the concept of thawing. 

The temperature in New York has remained near or below freezing since the storm hit on January 25 and 26. Most past storms featured warmer, thawing weather right after the storm.

The complainers point to a 27 inch blizzard on January 23, 2016. That one was more than twice as deep as this year's snowfall, but it disappeared fairly quickly. It was above freezing in New York every day after that snowstorm. It was 47 degrees on January 27, 56 degrees on January 31 and a toasty 60 on February 1

Snow depth fell to just six inches within a week after the storm. By February 2, only a trace remained. 

It's not like everybody is complaining. A lot of New Yorkers just say fughetaboutit

On Threads, a New Yorker very reasonably wrote: "All these people talking about yellow snow and dirty snow. Garbage piled up. This is how it has always been after a snowstorm. For decades. It doesn't make it right. It just makes it true. Don't blame Mamdani. Don't blame the MTA. Understand that it takes time to remove snow in a city this size."

Other people got deliciously sarcastic on line:

"After TWO WEEKS there's STILL snow in Central Park, New York City! When will Mamdani get rid of it! Another epic fail!" 

The writer made clear this was indeed sarcasm, so other people mockingly piled on poor Mayor Mamdani. 

"Why hasn't Mamdani made the temperature go above 40 degrees yet?"

"And when will that monster finally put the leaves back on the trees?"

"Socialism brings snow. Why do you think Russia has so much snow?"

"Snow never existed before he was mayor. He cast a spell to create this thing called snow."

"Wasn't he to blame for the blizzard of '96?"

Mamdani was four years old when the blizzard of 1996, so it of course makes perfect sense that this notorious storm was his fault. 

CLEANUP CONTINUES

 New York has alternate side parking rules in which people need to park on one side of the street some days, and other side on different days. This allows for street cleaning.

The city suspended the rules after the big snowstorm on January 25-26. But the suspension ends on Super Bowl Sunday - this weekend -  and quite a few cars are buried under snow and ice. Those buried cars will need to be moved by then, or there will be towing and serious expenses for those car owners. 

It was fairly mild by this winters standards in New York Thursday and Friday which softened the ice encasing the cars a little. That was everybody's last chance to dig out their vehicles. With another intense blast of Arctic cold surging into New York, the ice around those cars is no doubt hard as concrete again. Good luck getting rid of that.   

I'm sure there will be plenty more whining when the expensive parking tickets and towing hit on Monday. 

NO FERRIES

Ferry service on the Hudson and East Rivers have been suspended for a week and that's not going to change anytime soon.  So much ice has built up around Manhattan island that it's too unsafe for ferries to operate.

The ice diminished around Manhattan this week, but it's still there. And those frigid conditions forecast for the weekend mean that you're not going to take the famous Staten Island Ferry or any other ferries for awhile yet if you're around New York. 

At least New York is in for a minor break, anyway. After this cold snap clears out, daytime temperatures most of this week will be in the 30s. 

Vermont Wasn't Alone: More Than 350 U.S. Weather Stations Had Hottest Year In 2024

A small thunderstorm pops up over Lake Champlain near
South Hero, Vermont on a hot, steamy July, 2024 day. 
Nearby Burlington ended up having their hottest year
on record, as did more than 300 U.S. cities last year. 

When I said the other day that a couple cities in Vermont had their warmest year on record in 2024, we weren't exactly unique.  

Turns out Burlington, Vermont was among at least 299 United States sites that had their warmest year on record in the Lower 48.  Another 60 sites tied their records for warmest year.

Data are trickling in from other cities so this number might grow. 

This is more evidence hat we are living in a very different climatological world than we did just a few decades ago. If the climate were normal, most places would not have a record warm or cold year. But a roughly equal number of cities would have had a record warm or a record cold year. 

Not in 2024, that's for sure! 

Only three states - Delaware, Rhode Island and South Carolina - didn't have any cities reporting record breaking or record tying heat. 

That means the 2024 heat was widespread across the nation. Virtually everyone enjoyed or endured - depending on your perspective - a hot 2024, But it does seem it was most widespread from the Southwest, through Texas and parts of the Deep South. And also the interior Northeast and parts of the Great Lakes. 

In Vermont, the data set compiled by the Southeast Regional Climate Center says Burlington, St. Johnsbury, Montpelier and Woodstock had their hottest year on record in 2024.  Bennington tied the record for hottest year. 

Nearby cities that had their hottest year in 2024 include Albany in New York and Concord, Berlin and North Conway, New Hampshire.    

There were a couple spots that were coolish, at least by comparison. 

The heat was well distributed throughout the year. It wasn't just one standout month that skewed 2024 toward warmth. 

Some cities had more than 40 record highs distributed through the year, which is a lot. Pascagoula, Mississippi endured 56 days with record highs in 2024. San Antonio and Tampa had 56 such days. 

Phoenix, Arizona famously suffered through 21 consecutive days of record highs late September and October.  No American city had ever had that many consecutive record highs. 

Here in Vermont, Burlington managed just 11 record highs, but that's a lot for a single year when the records go back to the 1880s. There were no record lows in Burlington in 2024.

The heat in Vermont has lasted years. Each of the past five years are among Burlington's top 10 warmest. 

Since 2000, Burlington has had 46 record highs, and just one record low.

Nighttimes during 2024 in the United States were also particularly oppressive, especially near the overheated Gulf of Mexico. Brownsville, Texas and Key West, Florida each had more than 40 nights the were record warmer.  

Analysts could not find any cities that came anywhere close to their top 10 list of coolest years. The closest to that was probably Los Angeles, as measure at the airport. Winter storms early in 2024 kept the city cool. The airport is also close to the coast, so summer and autumn breezes off the Pacific Ocean kept inland heat waves at bay.

So Los Angeles was tied for their 26th coolest year out of the past 80 years. Not a big deal. 

Final figures aren't quite in yet, but either 2012 or 2024 will turn out to be the hottest year on record in the United States.  The bets are 2024 will be the hottest, we'll find out within days with NOAA releases their monthly report. 

Climatologists are also already sure that last year was the world hottest on record, breaking the mark set just a year earlier. 

Heat Has Already Endangered More Than 1.5 Billion People This Year, Says Washington Post

Even before the start of June, heat endangered at least
1.5 billion people around the world, according to
a Washington Post analysis.

 It's barely into summer, not even astronomical summer quite yet, and the heat waves are building across the Northern Hemisphere. 

The year globally has been at a record hot pace this year. Often that heat is dangerous. 

An analysis by the Washington Post has concluded that 1.5 billion people around the world have already experienced heat that is potentially life-threatening. 

And this was as of the end of May. I doesn't include the heat now enveloping much of the United States, southeastern Canada and parts of Europe 

The baseline is what the National Weather Service has as a threshold for dangerous temperatures. They define it as a heat index of at least 103 degrees. 

Notice we're talking about heat index and not actual temperatures. If it's humid the heat index can be 103 degrees or more even if actual temperatures are only in the 90s. 

A healthy person exposed to such a heat index will probably end up with heat cramps and heat exhaustion. Prolonged exposure can cause heat stroke, which is a life-threatening condition.  

The Washington Post analysis  looked at 14,000 cities around the world to determine how many people were affected by this dangerous heat. It didn't include smaller towns and rural villages, so the 1.5 billion people is almost definitely an undercount. 

This is just a guess, but I imagine another billion people or more will wilt as the 103 degree heat danger threshold spreads to new areas through the summer.  

It has always gotten dangerously hot in some highly populated cities like Bangkok, Thailand and Mumbai, India. ]

However, as WaPo's Harry Stevens writes:  

"As global warming had nudged temperatures higher, days with dangerous heat have grown more common. Bangkok's 76 days of dangerous heat are a record for this point in the year (remember, as of  May 31), according to meteorological data beginning in 1979.

Other cities follow a similar pattern. Lagos, Nigeria, for instance, has faced 13 times as many dangerous heat days this year than average,"

 The heat in April and especially May struck a wide range of places. Southern Asia. Huge swaths of Africa. Central America. Mexico. Texas. Florida.   

So many more places will see dangerous heat - in some places repeatedly - before the cool breezes of autumn finally arrive in the Northern Hemisphere. 

We always say that the heat is most dangerous to the elderly and infirm, and that's certainly true. But everybody is at risk when the heat index gets ridiculous.   But as the Washington Post reports: 

"Even able-bodied people can fall victim to extreme heat. 'People typically are not aware that they're getting into trouble with the heat until they're really getting into trouble with the heat," said Kristie Ebi, an epidemiologist at the Center for Health and Global Environment at the University of Washington. 'You see people out doing activities when it's quite warm and suddenly, somebody collapses."

The grim part of this rising risk of deadly heat in the age of climate change is that it's all a sort of fossil fossil fuel-driven eugenics. Or at least Darwinism. 

WaPo 's Harry Stevens again:

"There is, however, a morbid silver lining to heat waves' lengthening duration. When a heat wave hits, mortality starts to rise after about 24 hours, as people unable to cool themselves down at night begin to perish, Ebi told me. 

But after a certain point, the death rate drops. Those most susceptible to heat's ravages have already passes away, leaving behind a population more fortified against the danger.

'A healthy adult can handle more days. It may not be pleasant, but, frankly, people have done this for millennia , Ebi said. 'It's the people who are more susceptible le to heat who we need to think about. And as the population is aging and taking more prescription medications, the pool of people who are susceptible is much larger.'"

There's a societal danger in all this. In some cultures, the elderly are revered. But - at least in my opinion - that reverence is fading, if it ever existed in some places, anyway. 

I really hope there's not a crowd out there who hopes climate driven heat "culls the herd."  The world can be a cruel place though. He just gotta keep hoping better minds and bigger hearts win the battle. 

 

 

Should Vermont Prepare For An Influx Of Climate Refugees?

Aerial view of Interstate 89, Exit 12, Taft Corners, Williston,
Vermont as it looked in 1975. The area is now essentially a 
mini-city. Williston and the rest of Vermont might see
more rapid population growth soon due to 
"climate refugees" fleeing vulnerable parts of the U.S 

We're seeing one mega-disaster weather after another, almost all of which were worsened by climate change.  

Will this trigger a new great migration of people fleeing vulnerable areas?  

And if that happens, will Vermont be part of the receiving end of this big migration?

Experts are warning that residents of western and southern states, faced with extreme drought, wildfires, water shortages, big storms, hurricanes and sea level rise, will soon start to swarm toward "safer" places in the United States.

One projection by Matthew Hauer, an assistant professor of sociology at Florida State University suggests 13.1 million Americans will relocate because of sea level rise along by 2100, based on projections that seas along the U.S. coast will rise by nearly six feet by then.  

Where will all these people go?  Apparently, mostly north and east.  To the Midwest and the interior Northeast. Vermont is looking like one of the more desirable landing spots for these migrants. There's lots of reasons why. 

Vermont is one place where we don't need to worry about sea level rise. At least not directly.  The Green Mountain State is regarded a "safe" place from climate change.  Sure, we're affected by global warming in the form of worse flooding, periodic droughts, stronger, weirder storms, hotter summers and iffier winters. 

But we tend to avoid the worst of it all. The summer heat waves aren't all that bad, compared to other areas of the nation. We don't often experience hurricanes.  Big wildfires are exceedingly rare. Droughts tend not to be as punishing as in the South and West. 

Vermont is such a Goldilocks state for climate change avoidance that a detailed study by ProPublic and New York Times in 2021 listed the "safest "counties in the United States in terms of threats from climate change. Six of the top ten safest counties were in Vermont. 

I still don't know whether that's true, but it does make sound Vermont enticing, doesn't it? Certainly, most of the 13.1 million sea level/climate refugees won't come to Vermont. But some of them might.  A small percentage of those refugees would certainly swell our population far beyond the current 625,000 or so. 

It's easier than ever to pull up roots and move. Most people need a job, and we don't have millions of employment opportunities here in Vermont. However, the pandemic demonstrated that it's often surprisingly easy to work from home, or from anywhere as long as you have a decent internet connection.    Want to live in Vermont but your job is in California? No problem! You can do both! 

On one hand, this is good.  We have an aging population in the Green Mountain State, and we need relatively young, educated people here to boost our work force and our economy. We even have an incentive program that pays younger working families to move to Vermont to start new careers and lives. 

However, plenty of roadblocks get in the way of a potential booming population.  There's virtually no affordable housing around here. Or infrastructure, really. Plus, our population has been relatively stable for a century now. Vermont's population is less than double of that of 1900. Other states have grown exponentially.

We're accustomed to slow growth.  What if our population begins to grow rapidly?

We cherish our rural atmosphere. Our little farms, undeveloped forests, our lack of crowds.  We like our small and quirky state.  Will we adjust to many more arrivals if forced to? 

There's already resistance. Vermonters understandably cling to the small scale patterns of towns, populations, roads, you name it. We're not enamored by high rise buildings, super freeways, or endless sprawls of apartment blocks, "honky tonks, Dairy Queens and 7-11's," to quote an old Talking Heads song.  

Sprawl has long been a dirty word in Vermont. If we do receive an influx of climate change refugees, we will have to build more densely in existing town centers, and build upward. Meaning something akin to high rises. 

I can't imagine (at least not yet!) a Vermont with 30, 40, or 50 story towers.  Currently, the tallest building in Vermont is Decker Towers in Burlington, at a mere 11 floors, or 124 feet tall. Vermont has the distinction of having the shortest tallest building in the United States, if that makes any sense. 

By the looks of things, Vermont is going to have a hard time building anything remotely as tall as Decker Towers. Here's just one example, courtesy of VTDigger:

Busy Taft Corners in Williston is going through another rezoning effort.

Part of the change involves building heights. Currently, the tallest building you can construct there is 52 feet - about four stories.  Town officials wanted to raise the Taft Corners building height limit to 110 feet. That's about eight stories, so not gigantic. 

The town selectboard got so much blowback from that idea that they lowered the proposed height limit to 87 feet, or about six stories. That's still way too high for many people in Williston.  VTDigger quoted one resident:  "I just don't want to see a tall building in the middle of Williston, period. You know, it's a small town. It is a town. It's not a city."

Like it or not, the Taft Corners area of Williston has become a defacto small city.  This isn't the only building height fight we've had recently. Burlington saw huge opposition back in 2015 to a proposal to build two 14-story towers in the city's downtown.

It's either taller buildings or much more intense sprawl in Vermont if people flee to the relative safety of the Green Mountain State. One way or another, we'll have to choose. 

Vermont is already losing about 14,500 acres per year to residential development. (All of last summer, I heard the hammers and equipment for new houses going up in a formerly forested area less than a mile from my St. Albans house).

Building heights and sprawl are just two issues among many.  We'd have to think about things large and small. School size and budgets, taxes, affordable housing, infrastructure, broadband, land use, job creation,  cultural shifts. It goes on and on. 

Societal issues arise, too. Things that are really hard to talk about, but need to be confronted. Vermont is among the whitest states in the nation. We have a reputation for tolerance, but we have our share of racist, homophobes, Christian nationalists and other creepy people living here. 

A fair number of climate refugees that eventually arrive here will be Black, or of Hispanic, Asian or Arabic descent. How well will Vermont do as its racial diversity changes? I can only hope the resurgence of racism and xenophobia in the United States doesn't intensify further nationally and here in Vermont.   

We have slightly less but still real conflict points too.  Many Vermonters still dismissively refer to newcomers as "flatlanders" who supposedly don't fit in or bring their "problematic" ways of life to the Green Mountain State. 

It'll probably be best to welcome climate refugees if we get them, since it's starting to look almost inevitable. Other locations are largely supporting what is already starting to be an influx. 

In April, Tulane University associate professor of real estate Jesse Keenan provided CNBC a list of American cities that would be great "climate havens." In addition to Burlington, Vermont, Keenan listed cities like Buffalo and Rochester, New York, Asheville, North Carolina, Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Duluth, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Detroit, Michigan. 

Several of these are rust belt cities that fell on hard times during the later half of the 20th century. This might, for these communities, a bit of a resurgence and recovery. 

Buffalo, New York is already promoting itself as a climate refuge city. This city of screaming, blinding lake effect blizzards is actually regarded as among the safest from weather and climate disasters. 

Wildfires and hurricanes tend not to hit Buffalo. Heat waves are actually the leading cause of weather-related fatalities. Buffalo does get heat waves, but less so than many areas of the nation. Plus, Lake Erie tends to temper the worst of the heat waves. Bonus: Lake Erie has plenty of fresh water, so droughts are not that big a problem.

Also, there's room in Buffalo for an influx of people. As Fast Company notes, Buffalo's population was around a half million in the 1950s and is now about half that. 

Buffalo is also boosting affordable housing and bolstering its infrastructure for a climate refugee wave that has already started.    Roughly 3,000 Puerto Ricans moved to the Buffalo metro area to start new lives after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island. 

Fast Company does raise a risk that climate refugees can create in Buffalo, and anywhere else, including Vermont: Climate gentrification. Says the Fast Company article:

"'Think about the first people who are going to start migrating because of climate,' says Ryan McPherson, chief sustainability officer at the University of Buffalo. 'Those are not going to be poor people, right? Those are going to be people with resources. And so, we have to make sure that as we think about planning and making Buffalo ready for climate migration that we do that in a way that is very equitable and fair."

Wealth inequity is another important factor that we'll need to consider.  We already have an extreme dearth of affordable housing. Plus, people with wealth tend to get their way, at least more than people of more modest means. The more well-heeled could potentially crowd out people of more modest means.

Sure, we'll need to welcome climate refugees when the time comes, but we 'll need the backbone and morals to take Buffalo's pledge: Make it fair to everybody, not just the folks with lots of cash lying around.  We can't just let the wealthy drop in and snap up all the housing and land. There's got to be some fairness involved. 

Vermont is already starting to see the first few climate refugees. For instance, at least three families fled Paradise, California after the town was destroyed by a 2018 wildfire and ended up in the Green Mountain State. 

For instance the Boston Globe profiled the Holden family, who lost everything to the Paradise fire, and subsequently moved to "safer" Proctor, Vermont to start a new life.  They did a lot of research, including watching YouTube videos of the horrible 2011 tropical storm Irene flooding.  They were relieved that the Proctor/Rutland area, while damaged by the flood, was mostly intact after the disaster, unlike Paradise, California.  

And the house they purchased did not suffer any flood damage from Irene. 

The current small influx of people is manageable, and judging from the Globe article, the Holdens seem to be settling in just fine in Proctor. 

However climate change and its effects on human behavior often hit in sudden and surprising ways. Good, smart people in Vermont  are beginning to at least think about how to deal with this potential influx of people.

As WCAX-TV reported last year, we need to do a lot more to prepare for this possible influx: 

"UVM Professor of Community Development and Applied Economics Chris Koliba says from a social and economic standpoint, Vermont probably isn't ready to take in more people."

Koliba's remarks to WCAX in December, 2021 are not doubt just as true now. 

Note that we had a bit of an influx of people during the early months of the Covid pandemic, and that made the state's housing shortage worse, and strained schools and infrastructure to at least some extent.

The potential influx of climate refugees to Vermont does not at all have to be a bad thing. As Seven Days reported in January, these newcomers can inject the state's economy with new jobs and commerce, rescue flagging local schools and expand Vermont's tax base. 

As Seven Days notes, as long as we plan soberly, and welcome people of all income types, especially the squeezed middle class, and keep our rural character, we can reap the economic benefits. This could easily be a win for Vermont. Which sounds harsh, since climate change is such a loss.  " 

As for me, I'm absolutely for welcoming people to Vermont.  But we have to do it right and well. There won't be any do-overs.