Snow on top of snow

This winter our family has gotten used to snow on top of snow. If you live in a place where it snows all winter, you may find this old news. But in New York City, this is not usually the way snow works. Here it snows a nice eight inches or so, it melts pretty much completely, and then later it snows again. This happens maybe three times during the winter. And in Georgia, where we're from, you're lucky to get more than a dusting.

But there have been at least four significant snowfalls in New York City within the past month, totaling over 50 inches. Last week snow enabled us to ski on powder, a real novelty in the eastern U.S. By this week, that snow was starting to look a little worn around the edges, but all day yesterday we got lots of new, slushy snow. The previous boundaries between the snow and concrete were covered up like rumpled sheets under a hastily made bed. Last night when I walked up Broadway to meet CZ after a class, freezing rain was falling on top of the slush, making the sidewalks unusually slippery. There goes the snow, I thought.

Not so. At about 9:30 last night I looked out to see--a blizzard. The weather was like a summer thunderstorm, except that the precipitation was frozen and it lasted a lot longer. A fierce wind, complete with thunder and lightning, blew in over the Hudson, plastering the west sides of all the buildings with sticky snow. CZ and I sat on the hot radiator and watched it whirl around under the street lamps.

This morning we woke up to 19" of new snow. That's enough for whipped cream effects on the tops of bus stops and the feeling of walking on powdered sugar at every corner. I took a thirty-minute walk this morning during which I competed with dozens of residents for interesting shots of our usual neighborhood in its new guise.

So here's our neighborhood, transformed by snow. And as CZ notes, "It covers up the rat tracks so prettily."