Yard Boy Snowed in in the Big City

Jane and I were in Brooklyn with Kate and Anna for a week over Christmas where we got an up close experience of a nor'easter that spawned a mighty, windy snowstorm.

The storm started about 10:30 Sunday morning the 26th. Blizzard warnings were up. We were in Manhattan shopping and visiting the Met until 12:30 or so. When the snow started, it was steady but fairly light. Back in Brooklyn about 1 pm the north wind and the snow started increasing in intensity. After a fine late lunch at the The Farm on Cortelyou Road, we headed to Kate's 5th floor apartment to wait and watch. By dark the wind was howling and the snow flying by horizontally. Traffic had a ground to a halt as the snow continued to pile up. Visibility was minimal. Thirty-five mph winds gusting to fifty blew the snow into 4-foot drifts and howled at the window.

When we walked to our B&B late Sunday night, I taped plastic bags over my running shoes to wade through the snowy streets. Never thought to take my snow boots.



Streets were blocked by abandoned vehicles of every description. A city bus was crosswise on Cortelyou Road. Taxis, cars, vans, ambulances--the impassable streets were filled with stuck vehicles. The wind blew the snow into long streamers; on the downwind side, parked cars were buried in deep snow.

Cortelyou Road Sunday night:

Monday morning the sun came out. The snow was over but the wind blew as strongly as ever. Only the major streets--Coney Island Avenue and Ocean Parkway had even an occasional motor vehicle. Everything else was frozen in place. Hard to tell how much snow fell because of the wind--easily 18 to 20 inches, though. Everything was simply buried. People walking on the unplowed streets passed by high on a causeway of snow.

Anna waded into one of the drifts:

Tuesday was little different from Monday--cars buried, streets unplowed, wind howling and blowing and drifting the snow.



We had planned to leave on Tuesday, but nothing could move on the side streets where we were parked; traffic was barely moving on main arteries that were barely passable.

Our street on Tuesday morning:

The stalled MTA bus in the background blocked Cortelyou for three days. Every other vehicle visible in this view was stuck, too.



Early Wednesday morning, a snowplow cleared Rugby Road. After breakfast and a final shovel job to clear the snow between our car and the snowplow track, we headed out of town, back to an Ithaca with just a trace of snow on the ground, our blizzard adventure over.