This Winter, New York City Is the New Buffalo
By JAMES BARRON
Published: January 27, 2011
There was the recently familiar annoyance — at the buses that did not come, at the thigh-high stoops that had to be shoveled.
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A limousine, unable to drive uphill going west on 57th Street in Manhattan, was pushed back onto Avenue of the Americas by passers-by early Thursday. More Photos »
There was the unmistakable beauty — the snow-laden trees, the backdrops that Norman Rockwell could not have improved upon.
And there was the nagging question: Is New York City the new Buffalo, where snow — snow on the ground, snow on the roof, snow on the windowsill, snow in the forecast, snow measured with a yardstick, not a mere ruler — is just a fact of everyday life? All snow, all the time.
“I’m so used to it at this point,” said Diana Biederman, a publicist in Manhattan. “What days don’t we have snow?”
And so a fresh sense of snow fatigue settled over a city that has been hit hard in the last few weeks. Nineteen inches of heavy, wet snow fell on Central Park. That was only an inch less than the 20 inches that paralyzed the city a month ago, according to the National Weather Service. Parts of Connecticut and New Jersey got nearly as much, and snowfalls totaled at least a foot from Philadelphia to Boston.
In New York, where the slow response to the Dec. 26 blizzard became a black eye for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other officials, the battle was joined early. The mayor said on Thursday that 1,700 plows had worked overnight and that the city had hired 1,500 people to shovel crosswalks and bus stops.
But the city canceled school — Thursday was the ninth school day lost because of snow since 1978 and the fifth under Mr. Bloomberg — and transit officials suspended bus service until the storm had blown through, something they did not do as the December storm was bearing down and hundreds of buses got stuck in the snow, blocking plows and other traffic.
This time around, the mayor said at a news briefing, several dozen ambulances got stuck in the snow, but relief ambulances arrived quickly to carry patients to hospitals. And while the 911 system was flooded with calls and dispatches were slowed, “no calls ever remained in a queue,” the mayor said.
Transit officials also curtailed subway service when the storm was at its fiercest. Jay H. Walder, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said a few trains were stuck in the snow “for short periods of time,” but in contrast to the post-Christmas storm, few passengers were trapped onboard overnight. A transit spokesman said some remained on a train at the end of the line at Coney Island — they had nowhere else to go, and the heat was on in the train.
Mr. Walder said that the Metro-North Railroad through Westchester County and Connecticut “lost all service” for a while early Thursday. He said the Long Island Rail Road coped with delays during the morning rush as crews cleared station platforms and stairs.
At the airports, delays and cancellations were the order of the morning, though there, too, things were clearing up by the middle of the day.
There were signs that the snow was changing people’s routines. People sent e-mails and text messages about how a snow shovel was their new BFF — even apartment dwellers like Annie Tan, who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, bought one. Or they did what Alan Flax, a real estate broker from Forest Hills, Queens, did. He hired someone to help dig out his car, which was in Manhattan, on East Houston Street near Essex Street.
“It seems like an awful lot of snow in a short window,” he said. “Every week or every 10 days, it’s not just a little snow, it’s a lot of snow. It’s got me scratching my head — when did New York City become so snowbound?”
This is now the snowiest January since the National Weather Service started keeping track in 1869, and could end up being the snowiest month ever. So far the January total stands at 36 inches, 8.6 more than in 1925, the previous record-holder.
Tim Morrin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s New York-area office on Long Island, also noted that this was already the sixth-snowiest winter on record, with a total of 56.5 inches. The snowiest was 1995-96, with 75.6 inches.
“And we have all of February and all of March to look forward to,” Mr. Morrin said. “We remain in a pretty cold pattern that would be conducive to more snow.”
Even in January. The Weather Service is calling for more snow, but only a little, by Saturday.
Which will bring New York closer to Buffalo’s total for the winter so far, 61.6 inches.
Steve McLaughlin, a weather service meteorologist there, said measurable snow had been recorded in Buffalo on 39 days.
“We keep getting our inch a day, an inch a day,” he said. “All we do up here is nickel-and-dime it, but we’ll beat you anyway. We have to keep up the reputation.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 27, 2011
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the Port Authority had closed La Guardia airport early on Thursday morning. It was Teterboro Airport that was closed, not La Guardia.
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