The New York City area experiences varied weather
accompanied by the changing seasons. Winters are
usually cold and snowy, springtime and fall are
usually fairly warm and somewhat wet, and summer is
usually warm to hot and mildly wet. But deviations
from this normal pattern do occur, and they have been
occurring more and more often as of late.
One abnormality which occured just recently in the
summer of 1999 was a series of heat waves accompanied
by a drought. The heat waves were caused by the jet
stream being too far north, thereby allowing the hot
air from the south to travel northward. The drought
was caused by a lack of precipitation reaching the
area from the Pacific Ocean. These two factors
combined led to a very unpleasant and dangerous
summer.
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