The Blizzard of December 2010

I first started overhearing chatter about the upcoming storm on Christmas day. People were citing snowfall predictions of 15 and 18 inches. I thought surely these were exaggerations. But the next day it all came through as promised. Flurries started early with the first light of morning. The wind blew the flakes horizontally and we watched the pedestrians from our 15th floor windows and wondered what was being accomplished with umbrellas in this situation. Toni quickly made the “now or never” decision and quickly got into her most formidable winter gear incorporating a few items from my collection and headed out to the grocery store before it got any worse. Good move. Our first Nor'easter had begun.

Views from our apartment

The storm intensified all day long and well into the night. Once it hit its stride it did not let up. At around seven in the evening I only counted about a dozen pedestrians but by eleven o’clock the streets had become a playground of sorts. The numbers kept growing as tourists from the neighboring hotels poured into the streets to play in the snow and push cabs and cars through the ridges left at the cross street intersections by the plows. There were lots of people posing on 7th Avenue and the camera flashing was nearly constant. I found out from later news reports that many of them were from countries around the world and had never seen snow in their lives.
Buses stopped running by 8:30 and the airports shut down as well eventually canceling over 4,000 flights. The pressure center of the storm was so low that it was equivalent to a category 3 hurricane. There was lots of thunder and lightning as well. The official snowfall measurement in Central Park topped 20 inches making this the fifth highest 24 hour snowfall total since recordkeeping started in the 1870s and only six inches shy of the all time record.

Today there are only ridges of snow lining the curbs to remind us of what took place.

Tomorrow is the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium and they are hurrying up to remove the snow, something they have never had to be concerned with in the past. They expect 40 degrees at kickoff.