Just back home from holiday travels. Had a nice Xmas up in Shaolin w/ my Mom and brother. Tree was admired, gifts were exchanged, beast was roasted. Also, the great majority of the Mythbusters marathon was enjoyed. Oh, and there was also a chestnut cream pie (from Scratch).
Our plan for Boxing Day was to go into Manhattan and see some sites and have dinner w/ local friends. As the forecast worsened over the course of Xmas, we revised plans to lunch w/ some local friends. But the snow rolled in earlier than expected and the forecast was blizzard so we ended up having to bag everything and just watch the snow fall. And fall. And fall. Something like this.

December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse from Michael Black on Vimeo.

The storm on SI lasted 20+ hours and by the time we all woke up on Monday there were about 20 inches. Actually, that's the official NYC total from Central Park. I think Shaolin might have gotten more. It was hard to tell because the 40 mph winds had built up crazy big drifts. Sarah and I had been planning to head out for DE to see her family on Monday evening but w/ the snow still blowing like crazy, that didn't seem like such a great idea. Plus, altho the main road running by my Mom's house seemed pretty clear after having been plowed multiple times, the side street that would get us the 50 feet to that main road was very unplowed. And uphill. Also.
While waiting for the plow, we decided to brave the walk over to Net Cost Market (Shaolin's finest Russian grocery store). It's only about a quarter mile each way. But portions of that were through unplowed. unshoveled areas (inc. a couple of drifts that came up to my knees) and some portions involved walking in the road. Where we discovered that the main road we thought was open was actually pretty spotty. Several places where it hadn't been plowed two lanes wide, so cars would have to stop to let traffic go past in the other direction. And lots of snow drifting back onto the road. There's a big cemetary on one side of the road and the wind was just sweeping through it, picking up snow and dumping it back onto the road. What with the snow and the wind and the Russian grocery store (we did make it and pick up some pelmeni and pierogi), the whole trek started to feel like out-takes from Zhivago.
So we gave up on getting out Monday. Chilled for the rest of the evening. Played a board game about the destruction of Pompeii (thanks, Pru!). And planned to head out Tuesday AM. Had seen a mid-day presser from Bloomberg and other city officials about how things were going and the head of Sanitation said they were working on secondary streets and planned to have them plowed "today, tonight or tomorrow." At least that's how I remember it.
Needless to stay, since it's Wednesday PM as I write this and we just made it home tonight, there's obviously more to this story. Tune in tomorrow...