Winter: Then and now

Winter work and pleasure used to be — feed and water the cows, horses, sheep, pigs (if they had not been butchered), chickens and ducks. For pleasure, harness the horse to the cutter sleigh or the farm bobsled with straw and pile the children in it.


Or go skating, ice-boating or spearing eel through a hole in the ice.


Perhaps harness the horses to the wagon and follow the ocean shoreline, looking for wreckage from a ship lost at sea; of course, one not yet announced. Many pieces of timber, a chair, a table, a bottle, etc. were brought home as treasure.


Around the fireplace in evenings was the warmest place.


These past 31 days were winter such as our Long Island gets today. One hundred and more years ago it was a mite colder; I would say the cold would last longer and was nearer the zero mark. They had to fill the ice houses; it froze the bays and ocean shoreline, and one could walk to Gardiner’s Island!


This January our coldest night was 11 degrees on the 31st. It was in the teens on only eight nights. Our high daytime temperature was 55 degrees on the 25th; it was above 40 on 14 days.


Measurable snow fell on two days. Total snowfall for January was 5 inches. Measurable rain fell on nine days, and the total precipitation for January was 2.48 inches.


The winter wind was from the northwest on 23 days, sometimes as strongly as 30 to 45 m.p.h. There were 11 clear, 6 partly cloudy and 14 cloudy days recorded. Many drifts remained on the ground from the December 19 blizzard as late as January 24.


Remember this. Our ocean level is ever so slowly rising and its temperature too. Our shoreline is eroding and that makes the sand dunes creep, windblown, landward.