My first big trip of 2026 was planned for the same weekend as the Arctic Blast, or Winter Storm Fern, whatever you may call it — one of the largest snowstorms the US in over 20 years. I was slated to leave New York City for London that weekend, but as conditions looked like they would only worsen, my flight was cancelled and swapped for a Monday night red-eye, direct from JFK to London Heathrow. Though I’d miss a day in London, it would still be enough time to catch my connecting flight to Tunisia, slated for Tuesday afternoon.
While many travelers were panicking at cancelled flights and scrambling plans, I felt a strange weight lifted.
Enjoying the storm from the soft bed at Thompson Central Park
(Kaitlyn Rosati)
I lived in New York City for most of my life, but in 2024, I took the full-time digital nomad route, forfeiting my apartment, my everyday belongings like my bed and my KitchenAid stand mixer, and the comforts of having a consistent place to sleep, clean, and cook, all in exchange for a vagabond lifestyle. I now could be in South Korea just as easily as I could be in Sardinia, jaunting all over the world from place to place which creates dreamy imagery, but can admittedly be exhausting.
Yet still, I wouldn’t trade my everyday now for the mundanity of living in one place for an extended period of time. I enjoy my freedom more than anything, and though it can get confusing at best (“which country am I in?” is a common question I ask myself) and lonely at worst, I’ve worked hard to create this level of flexibility.
Scenes from Winter Storm Fern
(Kaitlyn Rosati)
So, there was a certain level of relief in learning I’d not only get an extra two days in New York City before I take off for the foreseeable future, but that I’d get to be part of the community during our one big annual snowstorm. I remember back in 2012 when I was slated to bartend on the night of that year’s big storm, and after learning the bar I worked at would be shut down, my friends and I grabbed my dog, Bowie, and trudged through the snow to go to Luckydog in Brooklyn, where we took over the jukebox with girly pop music and margaritas in hand. You know, margaritas — the classic snowstorm cocktail. In 2014, during the Polar Vortex, my friend Katie was visiting New York City during what was recorded as one of the coldest days in the city in over a decade. We took advantage of the opportunity and headed to an empty Central Park, followed by an emptier Times Square, wearing sequin mini skirts under our coats so I could give her the tourist photo opportunities of her dreams, risking frostbite in the process. Oh, to be young again.
Me (left) and Katie (right) during the Polar Vortex of 2014 with some heavy Instagram filters
(Kaitlyn Rosati)
This year, my time enjoying the snowfall would look a lot different from those days. I added a night to my reservation at Thompson Central Park, where, having stayed in one of their Upper Story Large Studio suites, was somehow more enticing than getting on a flight to London. Part of my incentive of staying here was that it’s home to Burger Joint, an Anthony Bourdain-approved burger hidden behind a thin red curtain in the hotel’s lobby. Having already dined there a few nights prior, instead, I unpacked my bag and ordered takeout from Dim Sum Palace, getting a mix of sesame noodles, duck and pork dumplings, and some form of neon orange Chinese-American chicken. My less than five-minute walk to pick up my order let me know that this storm really was no joke, and there was a strong reason why the number of flight cancellations on Sunday were comparable to those of the early pandemic. I took it as a sign to stay inside and rot.
Burger from the Burger Joint inside Thompson Central Park
(Kaitlyn Rosati)
When I returned to my suite at the Thompson Central Park, I flipped through cable TV, another rare luxury in my life, and decided to binge watch Euphoria in an effort to re-familiarize myself before the new season comes out. I forgot how hard-hitting that show is, and nearly three hours in, I needed a little break from the intensity of the show. At the time, I was going through some personal challenges and epiphanies, so being in a hotel room stuck with nothing but my own thoughts seemed daunting, but not as daunting as being in a different country alone with those same thoughts. I opened up my Notes app and wrote a quick song. Shortly thereafter, I came up with a melody that I recorded on my Voice Notes app, grateful for the soundproof walls as I plunked out some major chords to my new catchy tune.
Eating sesame noodles from bed; life’s finest luxury
(Kaitlyn Rosati)
As the hours passed by and my sesame noodles grew cold, I had the epiphany that I hadn’t taken a day to simply slow down and enjoy the art of doing nothing in what felt like years. 2025 was rough — it began with the loss of a dear friendship, followed by the loss of my job, and finally a sucker punch to the gut when my dog, Bowie, died from a suffocating illness. I carried on through all of life’s swings and punches, but in retrospect, I’m not sure I ever really took the time to process loss after loss after loss.
Yet, Winter Storm Fern, where I was trapped, figuratively speaking, in a hotel room at Thompson Central Park, gave me the opportunity to just sit. I cried, I wrote music, I ate takeout dumplings and when I ran out of those, I ordered room service chicken tenders, feeling like a child again. I binge watched Euphoria on the couch, and when I saw that the TV swiveled, allowing its screen to face the bedroom just on the other side, I transported my body from the comfortable couch to the comfortable bed, getting my daily 10 steps in that day, where I laid smack in the middle while continuing my HBO binge. I slept like a baby as the snow dramatically fell in a city that was once my home, and in so many ways, still is.
On the road again
(Kaitlyn Rosati)
When it came time to finally check out, I disassociated as I crammed my sparkly red and pink dresses back into compression bags in my suitcase; on the road again and back to the life I chose. My flight to London conveniently rerouted its way to Italy, my happy place. I’m taking that as another gift from the universe, one that I’m just as grateful for as getting stuck in a snow storm in a spacious hotel suite in New York. And if I learned anything from my three-day stay at Thompson Central Park, though I was drawn to the nostalgia of revisiting Burger Joint, a spot I went on a date to when I was hardly 20 years old, I wound up finding something you’d never expect to find in a city like New York and with a lifestyle like mine: rest, relaxation, and rejuvenation.