If you've perused the latest issue of the New Yorker, you may have noticed a rather long letter to the editor about a January cover (by Mark Ulriksen, pictured above). If you didn't, here's how the letter starts:

Mark Ulriksen’s “Winter Pleasures,” an impressionistic rendering of Grand Central Terminal’s main concourse, depicts the famous golden clock bathed in sunlight (Cover, January 28th). Note that this can be only an eastward morning scene, not a westward afternoon. The angle of the long axis of the concourse, following that of Manhattan’s east-west streets, is not 90° but 119° east of north, and aligns with the sun through its “west” windows only from late May to early July, and then only at an elevation of less than 3°. But aren’t those the south-side ticket windows at the left of the picture, with the tracks and trains therefore on the right? And doesn’t the clock seem to read three-fifty, hardly a time for the morning sun?

Yesterday saw a weather double-triple. High temperatures reached 100 degrees at LaGuardia and Newark airports, both records. JFK also set a record high, albeit only 97 degrees. The cool spot was Central Park as the thermometer at Belvedere Castle only got up to 95. Hot as it was yesterday, today looks to be a little bit warmer. Yes, warmer. It barely cooled off last night –this morning's low in Central Park was 87– so it won't take much heating to surpass yesterday's temperatures. We are likely to score a quadruple-triple, with all four official local observation spots reaching the century mark. It should be hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. If you decide to make a sidewalk omelet, take a picture and submit it to Gothamist Contribute. more ›

Really, we shouldn't be talking about heat in January but we're in the midst of another stretch of unusually warm weather. Temperatures were 15 degrees above normal over the weekend and at least that much again today (It's already 60 degrees at JFK!). If Gothamist has done our math correctly we will easily be the fourth warmest January on record and may squeeze by 1950 and 1990 to finish in second place. At two degrees warmer than any other January, 1932 will hold on to the top spot in the rankings. Rain moves in tonight and tomorrow looks soggy. It will be a little cooler but still well above average for the rest of the week. Can winter continue this warm? Only Staten Island Chuck knows for sure. more ›

In case anyone has forgotten what fall temperatures are supposed to be, today is your reminder. Today's high and low temperatures will be a degree or two below the November 11th normals of 54 and 42 degrees. Tomorrow will start off chilly, but we'll be back above normal in the afternoon. By Sunday we'll be back into the 60s, nearly ten degrees warmer than normal. more ›

When you look at the big picture the weather and climate of the Earth is quite simple. Energy in the form of light comes from the Sun. When it arrives at the Earth sunlight is either reflected back to space or or absorbed by the oceans, land, and plants. All that absorbed energy eventually makes its way back to space. Because the absorbed and emitted energy varies over the surface of the earth there a places with an excess of energy and places with a deficit energy. Mother Nature doesn't like energy excesses or deficits and tries to balance out those differences by putting the atmosphere and ocean into motion. That is, we get weather and climate. more ›