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......

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......

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......

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. Gothamist did a quick calculation at lunch and saw that......

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......