It’s been snowing for most of the day here in New York City and it’s mushy outside. It hardly even looked like it was snowing but for the accumulation. The Christmas tree sellers who are camped on the sidewalk outside our apartment building put a little tree on a post near their hut:

It’s probably the closest I’m going to get to seeing a snow-covered Christmas tree this Christmas, but hey, it’s New York — I could take the trek and brave the tourists down at Rockefeller Center, if I really wanted.

When New York City gets “blanketed” it’s never very pretty unless it’s the big white flake kind of snow that accumulates in quantities of at least 6 inches or a foot. Otherwise it’s grayish or mushy or icy.

When I was in high school, interning at a publishing company in Manhattan, there was a snowstorm in February that dumped almost two feet of snow on the city. Suburbs getting that much is one thing but it rarely happens in the city itself. I was up to my knees in it. What was miraculous about that storm was how silent it made the city. Cars couldn’t move; people hardly dared venture outside. None who braved the drifts (myself included) were really dressed as they should have been for stomping around in crazy snow. People in New York are certainly over-prepared for cold weather (the wind can cut between buildings with a pierching chill cold enough to rival my coldest ski mountain experiences) but the sheer quantity of that much snow left most people unprepared. Usually, though, if it’s snowing the sidewalks and streets are [pretty] clean almost immediately so usually you don’t even need snow boots, as you would in the suburbs where you probably have to trudge through your driveway to shovel it.

Anyway I bet the snow won’t stick around for long. It never really does. Hopefully I’ll get to enjoy it a little tomorrow.