Christmas 2022 brought with it what forecasters are calling “a bomb cyclone” from the Arctic!
Temperatures well below zero, snow and strong winds in most of the country.
More than a dozen people lost their lives!
Road accidents and thousands of canceled or delayed flights.
A couple of days, how not to leave the house!
But if you make your living on the street like Francisca Ayala, you have no choice but to take risks.
“Six in the morning,” he says.
– She got up early, we asked her.
“I have to work.”
This Mexican mother endures the burning in her fingers from the cold and while her children work and study, she arranges her wares in the hope that they will sell.
“We come to fight. And we must, with the cold, with the heat, with the snow, with the rain, with the wind, we must be in battle”, adds Ayala.
Snow in the state fell as far north as Buffalo, where rainfall exceeding 22 inches broke a record for the 1976 date.
Arctic cold brought high winds to New York City and, according to the Poweroutage.us website, more than 77,000 New Yorkers lost power.
Luis Ángel delivers food on a rather rustic bicycle and is one of many who say he is happy to have a job.
“I have to do my job no. And if I’ll be home, no one will give you a house or food for free!
And it is that the Hispanic community is one of the most exposed to the elements, without losing the Christmas spirit.
It’s the coldest Christmas Eve on record in modern history, but for Latinos, it’s Christmas Eve.
Francisca Ayala, a street vendor, is clear on what to do:
“You need to go visit your family and be peaceful and quiet and have fun for a while.”
Usually this square between 104th street and Roosevelt avenue is full of street vendors. But only a few “brave” have decided to brave the cold, to try to sell the latest news for the Christmas period.
And, of course, the intense cold of the city hasn’t stopped businesses from taking advantage of the last hours before Santa’s arrival and being able to grant the “wishes” of late shoppers.
– You decided today to go out looking for your Christmas present, did you need a coat?
“Yes, my sister gave me a present for Christmas with my brother-in-law,” says Benjamín Inga.
