Paris vs. New York City in Winter

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Battling Out Winter in Two Great Cities

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

Paris (arguably the capital of Europe) and New York City (some say the capital of the world) offer very different experiences of winter.

Cold? Both can be, but the winter I was in Paris, in search of the American Dream, was a typical winter. Temps went to 33 degrees and stayed there. New York can dip to 0 degrees, and the wind can whip down the straight streets, lined with tall buildings, to give that beloved canyon effect, and we’re talking wind chill way below zero.

In New York City, the wind comes off of the Atlantic, through the Verrazano Narrows, through Upper New York Harbor, and then splits in order to howl up the Hudson on the west and the East River on the east. It makes its presence felt all the way to the center of the island, on Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

Paris wasn’t windy in winter, though the air always moved along the Seine. And there is no canyon effect – there’s only one building more than six or seven stories tall, and that’s the hideous Montparnasse tower. Also, the streets rarely run straight for more than one block, which means the wind can’t howl down them very well. In fact there are no right-angle corners in Paris. Every corner is at a unique angle. It’s great.

The air moves along the Seine, winter and summer, but it doesn't debilitate people the way the wind does in New York City.

La Conciergerie, in which Marie Antoinette was imprisoned before being beheaded. There is a re-envisioned apartment in this building now, envisioning what her cell would have been like.

Of course, along the Seine, the famous vendors of books, posters, postcards.

A cobbled ramp (in a beautiful scallop-shell pattern) leading down to the quai.

Another view of the Conciergerie.

No matter which angle I viewed it from, Paris was beautiful.

New York has colder temperatures, magnified by wind. But it has more sun, and this is an important difference.

Paris is as far north as Newfoundland, Canada. More north than the northern edge of Maine. This means it’s much closer to the Arctic Circle than New York. So the sun is low in the sky in winter, much lower than in New York.

In Paris in winter, the sun barely makes it above the roof of a two-story building, even at its highest point in the day. And most of the buildings are six- or seven-stories.

On top of that, the skies are normally full of dense clouds that barely ever let a sunbeam through the cracks. If the clouds do part and the sun does burst through, the clouds make a point of blocking up that crack just as fast as possible.

So between a low, weak, northern sun and clouds that are diabolically intent on denying earthlings any sunlight, Paris winters are very gray, very dimly lit, and very difficult to endure if you’re accustomed to a more New York sort of winter.

I would be writing in my favorite library, La Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, with an eye cocked out the window. I was sun starved, and I intended to do something about it. I would watch, wait, write. There it was! A sunbeam! I would pack my stuff up, race outside, and stand in the sunbeam—even if it was in the middle of an intersection. Nobody’s moving very fast in Le Marais, where the library’s located. It's mostly tourists strolling. I’d stand there absorbing the sun’s rays on my face – and a minute later clouds rose and the sun was gone. For another three, long, agonizing weeks.

I was shaky, cranky, feeling ill. How did people in Copenhagen, Scotland, Sweden--all closer to the Arctic Circle than Paris--get through winter? 

Somebody said “Light lots of candles and take Vitamin D-3,” so I did. I felt no better.

Next time: what I did to deal with light deficiency.