In case the aftermath of our recent blizzard is getting you down, take heart from this: the blizzard didn't make the top five of blizzards. According to the National Weather Service this year's blizzard was only the sixth-worst storm since the agency began keeping records in 1869.
As a resident of the city's forgotten borough, I also am going to take exception to the way the city measures its blizzards. Official measurements are made in Central Park in Manhattan. That's the Manhattan that is chock full of cement and high-rise buildings, all generating sufficient heat and physical blockages so that the numbers seen in Central Park are so not representative of much of the other boroughs' accumulations of snow. Central Park recorded "only" 20 inches of snow for this blizzard. If only. Add another 10 inches or more and you get the picture in vast parts of SI. Lots of other places in the city that topped that 20 inches by a whole lot. If we are really, really lucky we might see our backyard again by Pesach--with the drifts we are topping 5 feet in some places.
Snow removal and ploughing has been hit or miss, to say the best you can say. It's Tuesday and I'm hoping and praying that tomorrow I just might be able to get my car out and drive--not a surety given the dismal showing of Sanitation in getting even secondary routes plowed. My college cancelled classes yesterday (I remember only two snow days in almost 11 years I'm working there) and for today as well, testimony as to the condition of the streets and the lack of above ground subway service in Brooklyn. A snow plough working to clear the parking lot of one of the major supermarkets was building a snow mountain on one end of the lot. 50mph winds toppled the mountain and buried the snow plough with the driver trapped inside--pretty typical of the horror stories that drivers are telling about this storm. Let's not even mention that garbage collection might, just might, resume next Monday if we are lucky.
New Yorkers who got stranded out of town due to the closing of our area's airports just might be lucky to make it home for New Years.
I've said it before and I'll repeat it now: snow is beautiful when seen in the pages of a travel magazine or in a film. The reality has far less to do with beauty and a whole lot more to do with frozen fingers and toes, disrupted lives, safety issues (and just how is an ambulance or fire truck supposed to get down unploughed or barely ploughed streets?) and a whole lot of frustrating inconvenience. One of my kids, in Teaneck, has been without her landline phone, Internet and television service since early on Sunday. The cable company finally showed up at 10am today and basically told her that it could be another 48 hours until any service is restored. So traveling in her area is iffy due to cancelled or highly delayed service, roads are treacherous, and street parking doesn't exist, making getting to the office a highly debatable undertaking, and working at home isn't an option because of lack of the Internet. Wouldn't ask my daughter about the "beauty" of this blizzard.
To paraphrase that old kids rhyme:
Snow, snow go away
Please don't come back another day.
4 comments:
The beauty of such a thing is simply that it disproves global warming, therein making it all worth it!
Oh yes, a single storm is certainly going to disprove a scientific theory with mountains of evidence behind it.
"mountains of evidence"
give me a break!
most scientists say that the entire thing is a farce! it is a liberal conspiracy!
and let me remind you, this is not a single storm, this is the weather pattern of the past three years consistently getting colder.
And please bear in mind, that even the conspirators themselves have realized just how ludicrous the claim of global warming is, therefore renamed it "climate change"
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