New York City Rediscovers Winter,And Not Everybody Is Happy About It

This screen grab of a New York City webcam on Friday 
looked peaceful enough, but some New Yorkers are 
not handling the toughest winter in recent memory
very well. It gets very cold again this weekend. 

Snow and winter cold that just won't go away is driving some New Yorkers batty. 

As many of us know, almost a foot snow and sleet fell on New York City back on January 25 and it has just sat there. Stubbornly. Daring for people to say mean things about it as it turns gray, yellow, slushy and gross. 

Mean things are also being said about the air temperatures, which has been consistently colder than it's been in yeats. 

And those mean things are being said. 

Egged on by the New York Post, a right wing, Murdoch owned publication, New Yorkers, mostly of MAGA ilk are enraged that snow is still narrowing sidewalks, making parking difficult and is just plain nasty to look at, now that it's been sitting around getting dirty for more than a week.

Trash bags are still out there too, as the sanitation department focused on clearing snow, so some trash pickups were delayed.

All that snow I'm sure is frustrating to New Yorkers. But it's mostly really about the Post and MAGA trying to do anything to take leftie Mayor Zohran Mamdani down a peg. Because he's - gasp! a democratic socialist. 

Hizzoner probably hasn't done a perfect job with this winter storm. No mayor would. But from my vantage point, he's done pretty well from what I can see. But what do I know? I'm just a hick from Vermont who has plenty of room to throw snow out of the way if I need to. 

The complaints seem to center on the fact that in past big storms the snow disappeared from the streets pretty quickly after big storms. 

Which is true. 

But the whiners don't seem to understand the concept of thawing. 

The temperature in New York has remained near or below freezing since the storm hit on January 25 and 26. Most past storms featured warmer, thawing weather right after the storm.

The complainers point to a 27 inch blizzard on January 23, 2016. That one was more than twice as deep as this year's snowfall, but it disappeared fairly quickly. It was above freezing in New York every day after that snowstorm. It was 47 degrees on January 27, 56 degrees on January 31 and a toasty 60 on February 1

Snow depth fell to just six inches within a week after the storm. By February 2, only a trace remained. 

It's not like everybody is complaining. A lot of New Yorkers just say fughetaboutit

On Threads, a New Yorker very reasonably wrote: "All these people talking about yellow snow and dirty snow. Garbage piled up. This is how it has always been after a snowstorm. For decades. It doesn't make it right. It just makes it true. Don't blame Mamdani. Don't blame the MTA. Understand that it takes time to remove snow in a city this size."

Other people got deliciously sarcastic on line:

"After TWO WEEKS there's STILL snow in Central Park, New York City! When will Mamdani get rid of it! Another epic fail!" 

The writer made clear this was indeed sarcasm, so other people mockingly piled on poor Mayor Mamdani. 

"Why hasn't Mamdani made the temperature go above 40 degrees yet?"

"And when will that monster finally put the leaves back on the trees?"

"Socialism brings snow. Why do you think Russia has so much snow?"

"Snow never existed before he was mayor. He cast a spell to create this thing called snow."

"Wasn't he to blame for the blizzard of '96?"

Mamdani was four years old when the blizzard of 1996, so it of course makes perfect sense that this notorious storm was his fault. 

CLEANUP CONTINUES

 New York has alternate side parking rules in which people need to park on one side of the street some days, and other side on different days. This allows for street cleaning.

The city suspended the rules after the big snowstorm on January 25-26. But the suspension ends on Super Bowl Sunday - this weekend -  and quite a few cars are buried under snow and ice. Those buried cars will need to be moved by then, or there will be towing and serious expenses for those car owners. 

It was fairly mild by this winters standards in New York Thursday and Friday which softened the ice encasing the cars a little. That was everybody's last chance to dig out their vehicles. With another intense blast of Arctic cold surging into New York, the ice around those cars is no doubt hard as concrete again. Good luck getting rid of that.   

I'm sure there will be plenty more whining when the expensive parking tickets and towing hit on Monday. 

NO FERRIES

Ferry service on the Hudson and East Rivers have been suspended for a week and that's not going to change anytime soon.  So much ice has built up around Manhattan island that it's too unsafe for ferries to operate.

The ice diminished around Manhattan this week, but it's still there. And those frigid conditions forecast for the weekend mean that you're not going to take the famous Staten Island Ferry or any other ferries for awhile yet if you're around New York. 

At least New York is in for a minor break, anyway. After this cold snap clears out, daytime temperatures most of this week will be in the 30s. 

Let's Have A Little Sympathy For People Struggling In Winter Storm Zone. It Really Was That Bad. Here's Why

In this image from Live Storms Media, the ice on the ground
was so thick and stubborn that a man resorted to using
a circular saw to cut and pry the ice from his driveway, 
The ice within the storm, and the long deep freeze
after it, has made cleanup for the storm especially
difficult and tedious in many places in the
Midwest and eastern United States. 

I'm seeing on social media a lot of snickering about people in the South, Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic States not being able to handle the aftermath of the big winter storm last weekend. 

I'm also seeing a lot of frustration among people who live in cities hit by the storm because ice isn't cleared from streets and sidewalks. There's still huge snow mounds, and pathways in business districts are just excruciatingly narrow divots between piles of snow and ice.

The frustration is more than understandable. Who wants to deal with all that ice and snow and difficulty in getting around day after day? It can be downright dangerous. 

Much of the ire is directed at city officials. And in some cases, some town and city DPWs really dropped the ball with this storm. 

But overall, a couple aspects of this storm made the whole thing a long-lasting nightmare for millions of people who are not in Vermont or other parts of northern New England. 

Sure, up to 20 inches of snow fell on Vermont last Sunday and Monday. But this stuff was as light as feathers. We were able to clear all this stuff off our driveways and sidewalks without a problem. The snow was so filled with air that it settled a lot, Burlington, Vermont had 15.6 inches of snow in the storm. By Friday, the snow depth on the ground was down to eight inches.

Us northerns were smug about our snow clearing abilities, not understanding the difference between the fluff in Vermont and the cement-like crust of ice further south. 

In a broad zone from northern Texas and in Oklahoma all the way to the Mid-Atlantic States, the storm started as snow. Then a ton of sleet and freezing rain on top of it. 

Ever try to shovel three or four inches of sleet? You'd better be a bodybuilder if you try. Then throw in some freezing rain. The layers of snow and sleet get frozen into a solid, glacial mass that's almost impossible to hack away. 

The ice is so thick and stubborn in some places that a man in Lexington, Kentucky was seen using a circular saw in an attempt to cut and pry the ice from his driveway. 

South of the Great Lakes, northern New York and northern New England, snow and ice usually start to melt almost right after a winter storm ends. At least that's been the case in recent decades, as climate change has made extended periods of frigid weather increasingly rare,

But not impossible. The cold air has hung on relentlessly since that storm. A reinforcing shot of frigid air arrived yesterday, and will plunge temperatures to record lows in the Southeast tonight. 

Mississippi highways were still sheets of ice, with hundreds of stuck tractor trailers and other vehicles just sitting there. Cars were still sliding down hilly streets in Richmond, Virginia five days after the storm ended. 

In Washington DC, people are expected, under city ordinance, to clear the driveway in front of their homes within eight hours of daylight after a storm ends. Commercial properties face a $150 fine for not clear the walks and homeowners get $25 fines.

However, because the ice is so thick in DC, and it's been so cold, the city has temporarily suspended that rule. You still need to clear a path on the sidewalk, but if there's some snow and ice left that people can't hack away, the fines have been suspended for now. 

The temperature in Washington DC fell below freezing on January 23 and has been that way since. Temperatures are expected to remain below freezing in DC at least through next Saturday, except for a couple brief excursion into the mid 30s Tuesday and Friday. This in a city where the normal high temperature this time of year is 44 degrees. 

Also, snow that has a lot of sleet in it, like what's in Washington DC has now, doesn't melt nearly as fast as just powdery snow. 

New York City residents are grumbling about the snow, too, even though the Big Apple got very little sleet. The headline in The Gothamist Saturday was "New Yorkers begin to lose hope as freeze sets in and snow turns gray."

Garbage bags are beginning to pile up atop the snowbanks because the sanitation department has been more focused on snow removal than garbage. At least for the moment. The problem in New York is the same as elsewhere: There's been no thaw to remove the snow and no above freezing temperatures are in the forecast.  

It won't get above freezing in New York until at least next Saturday, and probably beyond that. 

As we head into February, millions of people will remain locked up in the ice and snow for many more days. A thaw will hit eventually, but it seems like forever before we'll see it. 

The winter of '26 is tough in so many respects. And that includes the weather.