New York weather is perfect for the penal colony it would have been if the European explorers had been better at east and west. Think hybrid of Siberia and Devil’s Island: either frigid or broiling and always too damp. The Koppen climate classification rates it “humid sub-tropical,” which sounds insane unless you were here this summer, swimming through omnipresent hot, wet air too thick to walk through. Ending on a 96-degree high note, 2010 is officially the hottest on record, and the driest since 1967, the previous record holder.
