Today is Monday, January 26th, 2026.
The good news: The snowstorm is, for all intents and purposes, over; a few more flurries are possible this morning, but no additional accumulation is expected. The bad news: The snow that’s already here isn’t going anywhere for quite awhile. Today’s forecast calls for cloudy skies and a high of 28 — well below the melting point — which is as high as it’s likely to get through at least the beginning of next week. Bundle up, everyone!
On this day in 1926, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of television to a Times of London reporter and dozens of members of The Royal Institution of Great Britain, a group dedicated to scientific research and education. “The image as transmitted was faint and often blurred,” the paper reported the next day. “[But] the visitors were shown recognizable reception of the movements of [a] dummy head and of a person speaking.”
One more bit of trivia: Today is both Dental Drill Appreciation Day — yes, really! — and National Peanut Brittle Day. (You have to wonder who thought that through.)
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
The NYPD 20th Precinct Community Council meeting, originally scheduled for 7 o’clock this evening, has been cancelled.
The Department of Education’s Mid-Manhattan Adult Learning Center is holding a sneaker drive; for more information on how to donate new and gently used sneakers, email Rmustafa@schools.nyc.gov or call (212) 666-1920. Sneakers are being accepted through February 9th, and will go to students in need.
News Roundup
Compiled by Laura Muha
In continuing with today’s real-estate theme: Nine of the top 22 sales in the city for the week of January 12th to 18th were on the Upper West Side, Patch reported.
A three-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath apartment in The Dakota topped the list at $24 million, making it the most expensive sale on the UWS and the second highest in the city; the next highest was a four-bedroom, four-and-a-half bath apartment at 50 West 66th Street, which sold for $9.1 million.
The top sale in the city for the same time period was a three-bedroom co-op on the East Side, which sold for $30 million, Patch reported, quoting statistics from Olshan Realty’s market report.
Read the full story — HERE.
To round out what’s turned out to be a very real-estate-heavy Monday Bulletin, here’s the ultimate anti-real-estate question: What would happen to NYC if all the people suddenly disappeared and the power went out?
That was the question that Popular Science editor Sarah Durn explored with the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Annie Colbert, on a recent podcast, and the picture they painted was bleak.
“[O]nce the lights go out, temperatures inside buildings start to fluctuate wildly,” Durn said. “No air conditioning, no heat … mold would start to form inside apartments within a week.”
Glass would crack, and water would get in. “Apartments turn into humid hot houses. Warm, wet, moldy, perfect for mosquitoes. Water, snakes, fungus,” said Durn. “It’s like a wetland on the second, or you know, 22nd floor.”
Without the electric-powered pumps that pump 13 million gallons of water a day from subway tracks, the tunnels would quickly fill with water. “Rats, cockroaches, pigeons, opossums, they’re first to move in near the stairs and platforms,” followed by plants like mosses, grasses, and hardy weeds that would create underground wetlands, Durn said
Then there are the buildings themselves: “The newest high rises, like 10 Hudson Yards, 111 West 57th Street, they would actually collapse first … Once their reinforced glass facades crack, water would seep in and eventually corrode the steel beams that keep newer skyscrapers upright,” she said. “[O]lder ones, like the Empire State building or Chrysler Building, would actually last longer thanks to thick masonry and overbuilt steel frames. Basically when they were first building skyscrapers, they over-engineered them so that they were even stronger than they needed to be.”
As for Central Park? It would be unrecognizable in five years, Durn said.
“Like a full-on forest?” Colbert asked.
“A young forest, but yeah,” said Durn. “And then after 50 years, a totally new ecosystem emerges. … It won’t look like anything humans have ever seen. Crab apple trees, London planetrees, honey locusts, pines, oaks, Norway maples would all start filling the city. Poison ivy and nightshade vines would creep up buildings. Moss would cover skyscrapers.”
Read/listen to the full story — HERE.
In Other UWS News:
- Elected officials have been banned from appearing in government-sponsored public service ads since 2007, so why is Mayor Zohran Mamdani the face of the pre-K ads currently running on LinkNYC? The website City and State New York explores the question — HERE.
- A bill to protect bodega cats, which was introduced last year by the UWS’s State Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, is a step closer to becoming law. Read/watch the story — HERE.
- Perceptions to the contrary, data shows that the redesign of the Central Park loop actually has improved safety for pedestrians. Read the full story — HERE.
ICYMI
Here are a few stories we think are worth a look if you missed them last week — or a second look if you saw them. (Note that our comments stay open for six days after publication, so you may not be able to comment on all of them.)
5 Upper West Side Landlords Named Among 100 Worst in New York City
UWS Middle School Meets With DOE Reps To Discuss Possible Move: ‘We Want to be Heard’
NYC without people made me think of this wonderful piece:
From “To Believe in Man” by Joseph Pintauro
Maybe the whole human race should just disappear…but think of thin packets of petunia seed waiting forever at the hardware store and raccoons in the dark, knocking over garbage pails, finding them empty night after night. What will the gulls do, the ones who like to follow boats? And hammocks strung between giant maples hanging empty, tattered in the wind even the desert would sense something… think of our days the first days without us and the church bells that have to wait for hurricanes to ring going rusty will be bridges and typewriters, golf clubs, battleships and diaper pins cannons and roller coaster tracks think of our cameras… warping cellos, strings popping off guitars our harps snapping… mildewing afghans think of the dust on our tables, sugar turned to rock our onions growing leaves in the pantry our cows bursting… think of our beds, neatly made and daffodils waiting in the spring wondering where we went.
… only the gentle ferns will not miss us they will go on forever unearthing, fanning the forest in places slightly touched by wind and never seen by man.