No wonder people go to Coney Island in the summer: Brooklyn, it appears, is a good ten or fifteen degrees colder than the rest of the city. We were surprised -- this isn't San Francisco, after all, where two or three blocks can be the difference between a rainforest and the Arctic Circle -- but a look at NY1 every half-hour, when the network shows all five boroughs' temperatures at once, tells the chilling tale. One recent afternoon, Manhattan was 62 degrees and the other boroughs were hovering around 60, while Brooklyn clocked in at only 47. NY1 meteorologist John Davitt says the borough's ocean exposure can make for cooler temperatures -- but the real problem, it turns out, is that NY1's Brooklyn weather station is located in an unusually chilly spot: at the base of a Time Warner Cable antenna on Connover Street in Red Hook. "Wind coming off the ocean can cool off that area considerably, sometimes by as much as 15 or 20 degrees," he admits. Davitt, who rarely appears onscreen except during big storms -- "If you see my face, you're probably not going to like what I'm saying" -- says NY1's four other weather stations are all located in more representative areas of their boroughs. Do NY1 viewers ever complain? "Oh yeah, all the time," says Davitt. "People call and say, 'What's going on, how come your readings don't match what I heard on the radio, or on the Weather Channel?' Basically, New Yorkers are a bit weather-obsessed, I'd say. But that's fine -- it keeps me in business."

Related:

• Archive: “Gotham: Life in the New City”
• Articles by Paul Lukas
• Table of Contents: May 1, 2000 issue of New York | Subscribe!