Snow

New York, NY, USA

Allen Mall 5

Looking south on Allen St during a blizzard

New York, NY, USA

Winter sun

Thawing snow and Williamsburg Bridge

New York, NY, USA

Up until today, the winter has been so mild that I was starting to wonder if we’d get any snow at all. Today answered that question in a quite decisive fashion, dumping about two feet of snow on us in the space of a few hours. It’s reportedly the second-heaviest snowfall ever recorded in New York.

The streets, not surprisingly, are largely empty. I went out and stumbled around in the snow for an hour or so, soaking my jeans to the knee and developing a healthy respect for the New England winter. For most of the inhabitants of this region through much of history, a storm of this scale would have been more a question of “Will we survive?” than “Will I have to go to the office tomorrow?”

Today, the snow is white and fluffy and lower Manhattan could almost be described as picturesque, were it not for the fact that visibility is about two hundred and fifty metres and the howling gray murk beyond is less than photogenic. The white and fluffy aspect won’t last, though. Tomorrow we begin again with the gray-black slush and the hidden ice underfoot and the vast lake of icy meltwater outside the 2nd Avenue subway stop.