New York City Geography & Climate

New York City sits where the Hudson meets the Atlantic, on a deep, sheltered, ice-free harbour — the reason the city exists at all and the reason it outgrew every rival port.

Only one of the five boroughs is on the mainland. Manhattan and Staten Island are islands; Brooklyn and Queens sit on the western end of Long Island; only the Bronx is attached to the continent.

Manhattan's bedrock is schist, hard enough to carry tall buildings, and it lies close to the surface in midtown and downtown and dips in between — which is a large part of why the skyline has two clusters rather than one.

The city has 520 miles of waterfront, more than Miami, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco combined, and much of it has only been reopened to the public in the last thirty years.

New York City sits on the boundary between humid subtropical and humid continental, and gets the less comfortable half of each.

Summers are hot and humid, regularly into the mid-thirties Celsius, and the density makes it worse — the subway platforms in August are notably hotter than the street.

Winters are cold, with the occasional nor'easter dropping substantial snow. The city clears it quickly, but a major storm will disrupt the airports for a day or two.

Spring and autumn are the good seasons and both are short. October is reliably the best month of the year.

Remnants of Atlantic hurricanes reach the city in late summer; Sandy in 2012 flooded the subway and reshaped how the waterfront is built.