Tourists brave the cold to make most of freezing Christmas Day in NYC
Brave Big Apple tourists didn’t let the cold keep them from the city’s iconic sights Sunday — as meteorologists predicted the big freeze will linger for a few more days before temperatures creep toward 50 degrees next weekend.
“It’s like 60 degrees right now in Miami. We get about one week of cold but nothing like this,” Blake Twitchell told The Post during a visit to Bryant Park with his wife Michelle.
“I’ve never experienced minus temperatures with the wind. It was shocking,” said Michelle, 28, who grew up in Colombia. “You don’t really see this kind of stuff in Florida.”
The couple arrived Friday and endured the cold to visit their favorite sights. On Sunday, the Brooklyn Bridge was at the top of the list, ensuring a chilly experience amid temperatures in the 20s.
Temperatures never made it above freezing Sunday, however — and overnight lows were expected to stay stuck in the 20s through Tuesday morning, Fox Weather Meteorologist Jordan Overton told The Post. After that, the region will see the mercury slowly rise over the course of the week.
“By Wednesday we’ll be in the 40s in the city,” Overton said. “We could very easily see temperatures in the 50s by next weekend. It’s a gradual warming trend overall.”
Z Sahin, 25, who works at a Christmas shop in Bryant Park, said the cold had led to smaller crowds compared with Christmas 2021.
“It was much busier last Christmas. Yesterday it was empty around 3 p.m. because of the cold,” said Sahin, who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Others blamed the lack of crowds on the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“COVID definitely hurt the Christmas rush,” said Kimo Hasane, 38, of Kimo’s Halal Food, who had set his cart up Sunday at 43rd Street and Seventh Avenue. “We only work on weekends now. Before COVID, we used to work from the middle of November until the end of December every day. It’s not as busy, and this weekend it’s very slow.”
None of that was enough to deter Kat and Matt, a couple from Charleston, South Carolina, who arrived in the city last Wednesday.
“We walked out of a Broadway show and it dropped like 20-30 degrees on Friday. The wind was whipping!” Matt recounted. “It was pretty cold but it was worth it to get out here. It was my first time visiting the city, and it was 100% worth it.”