Rock and Roll Hall of Fame songwriter Paul Simon said it best when he wrote the song “The Only Living Boy in New York” in 1969.
“I can gather all the news I need on the weather report,” wrote Simon, who grew up in New York City. Like anyone who has spent time in New York, Simon knows that the weather can determine everything you need to know about how your day will go.
I don’t watch cable news, so I don’t have a traditional weather forecaster, but I have Twitter push notifications for @nymetrowx. It has become one of the best resources I have to know what the world is like outside my window.
John Homenuk, who studied meteorology at Kean University, runs the account. He describes the New York Metro Weather as “hype-free NYC weather forecasts” and shares updates to more than 50,000 followers.
darkness: i’m otw
literally every person: it is 430pm
darkness: i’m here :)
literally every person: wh- why
— New York Metro Weather (@nymetrowx) November 7, 2021
Here is how he described how he found his voice (via Gothamist):
“We’re all New Yorkers, right? Everyone here knows the deal, whether it’s complaining about the weather or enjoying hearing about the weather or whatever people enjoy talking about it. So I thought, let’s make the conversation more about what the impacts are going to be on the day-to-day New Yorker, that’s commuting to work or walking to the coffee shop or going to happy hour. And instead of the jargon, let’s just have a conversation and make it so people can understand what’s going on. And since then, we’ve seen the interaction pick up and it’s been a lot more fun for us too, just talking to people and getting to meet people and seeing the account grow.”
The account posts memes and GIFs and uses a lighter tone than most are used to experiencing when they come across weather reports.
But my favorite thing about the account is that it uses a 0-to-10 number system to describe the “vibe” of the day. That rating gives a simple answer about how comfortable it will be to go outside in NYC.
So when Evan Zamir recently ranked the months of the year on Twitter and our staff decided to do the same, I immediately thought: What if I used the average daily rating for each month to help determine my rankings?
Homenuk loved the idea and gave me a spreadsheet with an archived rating for each day, dating back to May 2021, and I was able to find my results. My method was easy. I simply took the average score from each day to give each month a rating.
Then, like a college professor, I graded each month on a weighted scale based on the top overall month. For example, if the top overall month had an average rating of 7.43 and the sixth-best month had an average rating of 5.77, divide the second number by the first and you get 77.6 percent — which gets a C+ in school.
Below, you can find the data-backed rankings of the best months in NYC. Please remember these grades are not based on my opinion and that there are some shocking surprises to be revealed in this list! Global warming is having an insane impact on winter.
If you don’t live here, note these results when booking travel plans:
