Todd Heisler/The New York Times Robert Sullivan measured wind velocity on Thursday in the middle of the street at the corner of Montague and Court Streets in downtown Brooklyn, which he believes to be the windiest spot in New York.It is 16 degrees and sunny at the corner of Court and Montague Streets in downtown Brooklyn. The wind is coming from the northwest at nine miles an hour. We will now call to order the cold summit: Two bundled-up men who are passionate about the weather, two wind gauges and one extremely bright, extremely cold Thursday.
Like prizefightes coming out of their corners, the men shake hands on the plaza behind the State Supreme Court building. One is Robert Sullivan, an author who has written about the wind in this very place. Wind vortexes He knows all about them. He has watched the trash go swirling down the plaza â€" not as singable as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s lyric about “when the wind comes sweeping down the plain.â€
But that was “Oklahoma!,†which had an exclamation point. This is Brooklyn, which does not. And Mr. Sullivan is fonder of a line from Henry David Thoreau: “The wind th! at blows is all that anybody knows.â€
The other participant in the cold summit is Stephen Fybish, a self-made weather obsessive, sometimes to the irritation of forecasters and reporters who write about heat waves and cold snaps, because he makes a point of pointing out their mistakes. He arrives at the cold summit with a list of the coldest January days over the last 20 years and is soon quoting from “Poor Richard’s Almanackâ€: “Some are weatherwise, some are otherwise.â€
They are not trained as scientists, these two, but they are weatherwise. The day’s forecast is for biting winds, but Mr. Sullivan says it is early yet. The wicked, chapping gusts are not expected until afternoon. He looks at the wind gauges. “Nothing,†he says.
But Court Street is calling him. The middle of Court Street. He knows the local wind patterns and knows that is wher the wind swirls up. He steps off the curb, wind gauges held high. He crosses in front of a bus. The wind gauges twirl. The bus driver honks. The wind picks up.
“I think of wind in terms of water, and I think of Cadman Plaza as a place where there’s whitewater,†Mr. Sullivan said. “We have this wind coming off the East River, and Robert Moses got rid of Walt Whitman’s neighborhood of crannied streets, and what was left was a steppe. And the wind smacks against Borough Hall. If you watch the trash blowing around, it circles like something in ‘Fantasia.’†That is the 1940 animated Disney film in which Mickey Mouse, as the sorcerer, was outwitted by a broomstick in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.â€
Others dread the Brooklyn wind Mr. Sullivan knows. Alok Subedi, selling cheese at a table in the plaza, reflects on his native Nepal and on other places he sets up his table. “It’s cold in Nepal, but the wind gusts give you more cold here,†he says, “and Union Square is wi! ndy, but ! not like this.â€
Todd Heisler/The New York Times Mr. Fybish keeps exhaustive notes on weather phenomena.By then the cold summit had moved to a restaurant on Montague Street called, appropriately enough, Grand Canyon, and the conversation had gone off on tangent after tangent. About weather personalities on television. (Mr. Sullivan likes Janice Huff on WNBC-TV. Mr. Fybish, to the extent that he likes any forecaster, favors Nick Gregory on WNYW-TV.)
About carting home books of weather statistics when the National Weather Service threw them out. (Mr. Fybish didthat, when the weather service had an office in Rockefeller Center.)
Mr. Sullivan had a question for Mr. Fybish: “Did you know David Ludlumâ€
Mr. Fybish’s face lit up. Mr. Ludlum founded Weatherwise magazine.
“The only meteorologist to have a battle named after him,†Mr. Sullivan said. (Allied strategists planning an assault on a German installation at Monte Cassino, Italy, turned to him for advice on when the weather would be right. On his say-so, they waited nearly three weeks. He relented on Feb. 14, 1944, and the attack began the following day.)
“I sent him some of my research, and he sent me a very nice note: ‘Looks like you’re the real McCoy,’†Mr. Fybish said. (Mr. Ludlum died in 1997.)
Mr. Sullivan brought up the brutal winter of 1779-1780, when he said, the colonial army â€! œplayed d! efense†in the Watchung mountains in New Jersey.
“It’s not the place where we win the war, but where we don’t lose the war,†said Mr. Sullivan, who wrote about that winter in his book “My American Revolution.†“They held the Watchung mountains, and thus the U.S. exists. Valley Forge was nothing compared to what the troops went through that winter. It was probably the worst winter we’ve ever had.â€
It is still 16 degrees and sunny at the corner of Court and Montague Streets in downtown Brooklyn, and the wind is still coming from the northwest at nine miles an hour. We will now adjourn the cold summit. Let the record show that not one word was said about whether it is going to snow on Friday, or that spring begins in 54 days.
Todd Heisler/The New York Times Alok Subedi, a Queens resident who is originally from Nepal, tried to stay warm on Thursday as he sold dairy products at a stand in Cadman Plaza in downtown Brooklyn.
