It’s as dry as it’s been in New York for 100 years. Central Park saw 0.01 inches of rain on October 29, the first rainfall of any kind that month (the average, if we can count on one anymore, used to be about four). Since then, nothing. The city declared a drought watch on November 2. The temperature reached 81 degrees on Halloween. And yesterday evening we became, for a small unsettling moment, California, where citizens routinely have to flee from burning brush even in relatively urbanized areas. Last night Prospect Park, smack in the middle of Brooklyn, caught fire.
According to news reports, it started in the Nethermead, at the center of the park, around 6:40 p.m. About 100 of FDNY’s people got it put out by midnight. Two acres burned; mercifully, no injuries. Nobody knows the cause yet, except in the broadest sense of “it’s too damn hot and dry right now.” One of our colleagues who lives north of the park says that, this morning, the cars parked on her block were covered in a fine layer of sooty ash. You could smell it as far away as midtown. Or was that Jersey we were picking up? Because 39 acres of the Palisades also burned that same night. The air is once again “unhealthy for sensitive groups,” a phrase just vague enough to reassure no one.
Get used to that odor, and consider restocking N95 masks. Much more will be turned to ash in the next few years, including any hope of winding down the fossil-fuel era soon.
