The Most Recent Snow

On Sunday, January 25, we had snow from the small hours of the morning through about noon, then sleet until nearly dark, the sleet briefly interrupted by freezing rain. The forecast predicted this accurately, and I saw no point in shoveling snow at midday to give the harder stuff a chance to grip the walks.

 The crust left on the snow Monday morning was not enough to hold my weight without crushing a little. A few days of daytime sun and nighttime cold changed that. After the first day, a plastic snow shovel would not break through the crust, and even on Monday it was only in colder area that it would. Late in the week we saw a shovel discarded by the side of a street, the plastic blade broken in two.

Dealing with the crust made clearing walks and digging out cars that much slower. After other snows in other years, I had smirked at the way people would assert a claim to a shoveled spot--then it was generally traffic cones or garbage cans to hold the space until the car returned. But clearing a spot last week could be two or three hours' work for a grown man. The variety of objects used to hold a spot has expanded: small cones such as soccer teams practice with, chairs, folding chairs, tables, a ladder.

Most of our neighbors cleared their walks promptly. Corners seemed to be no man's lands, though. Between corners and uncleared walks, one makes better progress walking in the street, even with stepping out of the way of a car every few minutes.

When we went shopping on Friday, the roads were not bad, though narrowed by the plowed snow. Intersections with or of side streets could be uncomfortably narrow. This past Sunday, the sidewalks along 16th Street were mostly in good condition, in part because so much of the way they are maintained by the staff of apartment buildings.