Thresholds of Winter: Reading Cold, Heat, and Dormancy in Central Park
This visualization maps daily minimum and maximum temperatures in Central Park across more than a century, rendering climate as a dense field of seasonal repetition and disruption. By organizing each year as a row and each day as a cell, the work reveals long-term patterns that are otherwise difficult to perceive: persistent cold, extreme heat, and shifting thresholds.
An interactive filter allows viewers to isolate days above or below selected temperature limits, foregrounding concepts such as winter chill, hot nights, and heatwaves. Rather than treating temperature as a single average, the visualization emphasizes thresholds and duration — conditions that shape plant dormancy, urban ecology, and lived experience in New York City.
The spring arrival line estimates when spring-like conditions first appear each year based on temperature — the first day the daily maximum reaches or exceeds 60°F (15.6°C). Any long-term shift toward earlier spring conditions appears as the line gradually moving leftward through time.