It's been a cold winter, but this weekend will be a different kind of cold, a more dangerous and not to be ignored kind of cold.
With wind gusts of 50 miles per hour forecast for Saturday, leading the National Weather Service to issue a wind advisory for the entire weekend, extremely cold air will become blasted and supercharged, with wind chills dipping to 25 degrees below zero.
Heck, that's so bad Sag Harbor even canceled the fireworks at Harborfrost.
While for most in East Hampton the cold may mean a few extra gallons of home heating fuel burned, or fireplaces glowing with added intensity and purpose, it also means frostbite in under 30 minutes for those left exposed.
And who knows how many that really is. There could be a handful of people, perhaps people that only another handful of people know about, out there, homeless in the Hamptons.
For that reason, in the Village of East Hampton, the Emergency Services Building will be left open to function as a warming center from 6 Friday night through 6 Monday night.
On the East Hampton Town Instagram page, the town offered the following establishments as warming centers during their normal operating hours:
The East Hampton Library, the Amagansett Library, and the Montauk Library, the East Hampton Senior Citizens Center, and the Montauk Playhouse. The latest is open until 6 p.m.
The town also posted that those in need of emergency overnight shelter should contact the Suffolk County Department of Social Services.
You don't have to be homeless to be cold. A commenter on the town's Instagram post complained that their boiler was broken and scolded an oil company for failing to deliver oil. "Thankfully we have a fireplace and lots of blankets," the person wrote.
"We want to have something set up if something goes wrong for anyone," Mayor Jerry Larsen said by phone.
"The East Hampton Fire Department meeting room will be open starting tonight at 6 p.m. and will remain open continuously until Monday at 6 p.m.," read the village's Instagram page. "If you or someone you know could use the space, please don't hesitate to stop by. For questions or assistance, call 631-324-1024."
And then there's Maureen's Haven of Riverhead.
Dan O'Shea, the executive director, said that while there may not be many "street homeless" in East Hampton, there are roughly a dozen known individuals who live in inadequate housing. In other words, housing that is not prepared for 50-mile-per-hour winds and subzero wind chills.
"The challenge with quantifying the homeless in the East End towns is that they're a transient group," he said.
For the five coldest months of the year, seven days a week, Maureen's Haven operates an emergency winter shelter program, partnering with different houses of worship that on a rotating basis open their doors to house the homeless at night.
"Especially when it's cold out, we are consistently housing 30 to 40 individuals per night," Mr. O'Shea said.
He estimated that about a third of his residents are over the age of 55 and about 30 percent are women.
