Paul Berger is a staff writer at The Forward. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The (London) Times, The Daily and Guardian.co.uk.

Feb
13

Snow

By

Everyone seemed in a good mood today in the city as they navigated puddles and shuffled along patches of icy sidewalk. In weather like this you have to keep your eyes firmly on the ground to avoid obstacles. Because of this you also have to be more observant of people around you. I think the end result was that everyone was in a conspiratorial mood today—and therefore more forgiving of each other for getting in the way. I give it one more day before we’re all sick of getting soggy feet.

Record snowfall? I don’t doubt that it was a record in the New York region but in our part of Brooklyn, and judging by Manhattan today, it can’t have been so extreme. I remember visiting New York a couple of years ago (2002 or 2003) around this time and there was much more snow in Brooklyn and in the city. It really did come up to your thighs. And it stuck around for days. Anyone else feel like the hype outsnowed reality?

Unmissable link for today:
For cute-baby-in-the-snow pics see here.

Categories : Englishman in New York

4 Comments

1
Simon
February 14th, 2006 at 7:54 am

I assumed they meant it was a record for a single snow storm, not a record for the amount of snow on the streets. This would explain why there was more a few years ago.

2
pdberger
February 14th, 2006 at 8:11 am

Possibly. But the previous storm I am thinking about was the same. I had flown to New York for a Valentine’s weekend, there was a massive snowstorm and I almost got stuck here…

3
pdberger
February 14th, 2006 at 8:18 am

Have you noticed lots of spiders in your apartment lately? In the last two days I’ve seen three. Is it the snow and the cold? Or just a coincidence?

4
pdberger
February 14th, 2006 at 9:25 am

Some answers (regarding the record snowstorm) courtesy of the New York Times this morning…

So if this weekend’s storm was really the biggest, why did it not feel like it? Meteorologists and historians offered several reasons.

[...]The timing of the storm was obviously a big one. There was no rush hour to disrupt on Sunday, and the snow stopped soon enough for the plows to get in gear. The city had plenty of warning, and because the winter had been mostly a washout until then, the stockpiles of road salt were full.

Another big one was — for lack of a better phrase — the fluffy effect. Because the track of this storm was relatively far offshore, it did not pack the wallop of wet warm ocean air that northeasters can, so the snow was dry and fluffy. Very, very fluffy. Like a Persian cat in a roomful of hair dryers. Thus it blew right off tree branches rather than snapping them down onto power lines. It practically shoveled itself.

[...]Mr. Slavin hit on another mitigating aspect of this storm. There really was less snow in Elm Park. And it wasn’t just Elm Park. Borough Park, Ozone Park, Parkchester, Park Ridge, Minnewaska State Park, the Vince Lombardi Park & Ride — just about any park other than Central, the record-breaking storm actually broke no record at all.

For according to Geoff Cornish, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, the heaviest snow fell in a 15-mile-wide band that passed directly over Midtown Manhattan, the southeastern Bronx and northwestern Queens. Thus La Guardia Airport in Flushing received 9 inches more snow than Kennedy, and nobody in Brooklyn saw even 20 inches, let alone two feet.

In fact, of the 17.7 million people who live in the National Weather Service district that includes Central Park, fewer than half live in counties that recorded a two-foot snowfall.

Link here.

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