This year we almost had a white Christmas, but the first snow of the season came just a day late, & am I glad it did. The first snow storm turned out to be one of the worst in recent years, especially in term of cleanup effort by the city of New York.

Snow started falling & accumulating on Sunday at around 11 a.m., and the wind was gusting up to ~50 mph by nightfall. The wind was blowing snow everywhere, so there was no point for shoveling. By dinner time, our cable TV & Internet connection was out. Good thing we still had power & gas, so all was well.

Next morning we ended up with two feet of snow at our front door (a spot where usually don’t get much accumulation), with the wind still blowing pretty hard. Snow was blocking the screen/storm door, so I had to take off the glass on the door to climb out & dig us out. It wasn’t bad. However, since we live on a service road, I was pretty surprised (and so was the landlord) to see that, 24 hours after the storm started, our block didn’t seem to have been plowed at all!

Melanie & Kaitlyn were out there playing in the snow for a little while. After shoveling for an hour or so, I then went back into the house. That evening I walked to the bank on 86th Street to deposit a check, as well as to[butts]. the situation. The streets were unusually quiet. Many sidewalks are impassable but there were still more shoveled sidewalks than plowed streets. There were abandoned cars & trucks in the middle of the roads just a movie scene. There was even an empty bus blocking the whole road!

Tuesday, we decided to all go out & walk to 86th Street for lunch. Many people were out, shoveling sidewalks & digging their cars out. It was still a mess with all the slush, accidents & cars getting stuck at many intersections. It took us a while to walk out there but we made it. We went to McDonald’s and bought a few things from the stores before heading home again.

We finally got our Internet connection back Tuesday afternoon, and many trains & buses are finally back in service today. That means I can start working from home & Mel can go back to work again!

On our little outing 86th Street we took some photos & here they are. Enjoy!