Video: Skiing Down Park Ave.

“Sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling,” the New York Times sniffed in January of 2000:

Dr Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund was interviewed by the New York times in January 2000 as part of an article on the recent run of mild winters. As the article, which was about the ‘absence of snow’ in New York, reported:

Dr. Oppenheimer, among other ecologists, points to global warming as perhaps the most significant long-term factor.

Oppenheimer even had a tear-jerking personal angle on the ‘absence of snow’ in modern winters. The New York Times writer mournfully announced that snow-balls fights are now as outdated as hoop-rolling, and quoted Oppenheimer on the pathetic spectacle of the unused sled in his stairwell, symbol of a warming world:

But it does not take a scientist to size up the effects of snowless winters on the children too young to remember the record-setting blizzards of 1996. For them, the pleasures of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling, and the delight of a snow day off from school is unknown.

‘I bought a sled in ’96 for my daughter,” said Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, a scientist at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. ”It’s been sitting in the stairwell, and hasn’t been used. I used to go sledding all the time. It’s one of my most vivid and pleasant memories as a kid, hauling the sled out to Cunningham Park in Queens.”