7 January 2007Manny Fernandez
Hundreds of tourists and locals packed the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center yesterday, pretending that it really was a cold, snowy day in early January as they circled the ice beneath the giant Christmas tree. In Brooklyn, eight members of a cold-water-braving organization known as the Coney Island Polar Bear Club walked toward the waves, some wearing nothing but swim trunks.
The only thing that ruined this winter imagery was the temperature, which in the middle of the afternoon in Central Park yesterday reached a record-breaking 72 degrees.
And so the make-believe winter collided with reality: People wore T-shirts as they ice-skated on the wet and slushy rink at Rockefeller Center, and the Polar Bears held a moment of silence, turned their backs on the Atlantic and headed toward the boardwalk, a protest, albeit an underdressed one, against global warming, they said.
Louis Scarcella, 55, a former homicide detective and president of the Coney Island club, said the weather has been so mild that he is considering canceling the group’s winter swimming season, which usually runs from November to April. A club season has not been canceled since the group was founded 104 years ago.
“I have not made the decision yet,” Mr. Scarcella said gravely. “I have to meet with my board.
“It’s a possibility,” he added. “It’s not the extreme sport that we love. It’s a very easy swim.”
The unseasonably warm spell shattered records around the city and the state as well as throughout New Jersey and Connecticut. In Central Park, the high temperature at 1:37 p.m. — 72 degrees — broke the date’s previous high of 63 degrees in 1950, the National Weather Service reported.
It tied the highest temperature recorded in the park in January since record-keeping began in the late 1800s, sharing that distinction with a 72-degree high on Jan. 26, 1950.
The difference between the old and new records was even greater in Bridgeport, Conn., the weather service said, where the high of 68 was 15 degrees above the previous record, in 1949. In Newark, the high of 72 was 11 degrees over the old mark, from 1950.
Although global warming is a popular theory for the Northeast’s warm winter, the Weather Service cited a specific meteorological cause. “We have a mild air mass that we’re in right now, kind of tropical in nature,” said John Murray, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Upton, N.Y. “The cold air masses in Canada have stayed up there.”
At the Rockefeller Center rink yesterday, it was hard to find anyone in the mood to complain. Susan Berardesca, who was visiting the city from Pennsylvania, brought her son and two daughters, because yesterday seemed as perfect a day for ice-skating as any other, she said.
“It is what it is,” she said of the weather. “I’m just enjoying it. The snow will be here soon enough, then everyone will be complaining.”
The nearby ice-skating rink in Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library, was not as lucky. Managers kept it closed because the chilling system could not keep the ice on the top layer of the rink frozen in the warm weather.
Scattered puddles dotted the rink as people stood around glumly, snapped photographs and rearranged their schedules.
“I just bought new skates,” said Aileen Kwok, 18, a student at New York Institute of Technology, who stood with her friends and her Bauer ice skates at the padlocked door. “I guess now I have to go shopping.”
The rink was scheduled to reopen today, with temperatures expected to be in the low 50s.
The Weather Service said that there was a “slight chance of snow showers” on Tuesday, and that the low temperature by Tuesday night was expected to fall to 29 degrees.
In Times Square yesterday, one street performer was rejoicing in the seasonal flip-flop: Robert Burck, a k a the Naked Cowboy, who trolls for cash wearing nothing but his cowboy hat, underwear, boots and guitar. Business was brisk. “This is like a $1,000 day instead of a $50 or $100 day in the winter,” he said.
