A few Stuy Town residents like Ryan, with son Tommy, braved the heat, heading out to the playground sprinklers to cool down. (Photos by Maria Rocha-Buschel)
By Maria Rocha-Buschel
Can it be too hot to play in the sprinklers during a heat wave?
Town & Village found that it might be, in a recent visit to the water parks in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in the midst of the oppressive heat on Monday.
Stuy Town residents Dennis Mulligan and Anne Marie, who were out sitting in the shade by the Oval on Monday afternoon, said they noticed a mysterious absence in the playgrounds that day.
“No one’s outside,” Mulligan said. “It’s too hot. Even the kids aren’t out.”
The National Weather Service recorded the highest temperature in Central Park as 94 degrees Fahrenheit around noon on Monday, but officials warned that the combination of the high heat and humidity made it feel like it was over 100, creating dangerous conditions, especially for seniors.
Most of the non-sprinklered playgrounds in Stuy Town were desolate when this reporter went by, and Oval staff members who were stationed at the basketball courts in Playground 11 said that even the parks with sprinklers that were usually packed with kids were almost empty that afternoon.
“The moms and nannies probably don’t want to take the kids out because then they just have to sit at the sprinklers, melting themselves,” one of the staff members theorized.
