On Monday July 30 at 3pm the following stations...NYC, LGA, EWR, TEB, JFK, ISP, BDR and Caribou Maine reported the following temperatures in scrambled order...81,81,80,80,77,77.77,74. See if you can guess who reported the 74 (hint...it was not Caribou). The answer is NYC. It had not rained in 48 hours.
NYC has now routinely been reporting maximum temps 3-5 degrees or more lower than comparable local stations not dominated by sea breezes. The temperature deficiencies are especially pronounced in the mid to late afternoon. On Tuesday July 31 at 4pm the temperatures for the 8 stations listed above (in scrambled order) were 84,82,81,80,80,80,78,77. NYC reported the 77.
Wednesday, August 1 was the most extreme. When I first saw the high of 93 at LGA I thought it was a typo. It turns out that while LGA was warm, NYC was the real outlier. At 4pm the average of 10 stations in the NYC metropolitan area, including Breezy Point (surrounded by water) and Bronx Botanical Gardens (probably has some foliage) was 86.8. Six Northern NJ stations averaged 87.3. Central Park boasted 81. I would think that a 9 degree spread between LGA and NYC has to be a record.
All of this would be an amusing diversion except for the fact that this is the "official" New York City temperature that everyone from the uninformed media and public to experienced professional meteorologists looks to as an accurate representation of conditions in Manhattan and an accurate standard of comparison (for example, experienced mets routinely use the NYC number when comparing the number of 90+ days around the country). The largest city in the US deserves better, foliage or no foliage. Meanwhile, I suggest that Upton send someone out to make sure that the temperature sensor wasn't vandalized and that someone didn't in fact remove it and toss it into the polar bear pool at the zoo.
