As is the case all over the northeast, Brooklyn received a massive amount of snow on Sunday. Nearly two days later, the streets still aren’t plowed, buses aren’t running, subways aren’t running, and it doesn’t look like conditions are improving anytime soon.
What makes things worse are the drivers who are abandoning their vehicles in the middle of the street. As I walked a few blocks from my parents’ house to visit my aunt, I saw a few cars stuck in the avenue. A few hours later, the cars were still there. While plows (whenever they get around to this area) can move around some of these cars, there are other 1 and 2 lane streets that are completely blocked off.
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It could be worse… at least we still have electrical power, and I’m getting plenty of exercise shoveling snow and ice.
Still, ignoring the inconvenience, how are ambulances supposed to pass streets like this?
I’ve NEVER seen the roads this bad, with public transportation disabled for this long after a snowstorm before. Either the city officials were caught completely unprepared, or layed off too many sanitation employees.
Ethan@OPC
Sounds like last winter. We didn’t get much of anything in MD and I’m not really sad about that.
Stuart
It’s not the snow that’s the problem, it’s the city’s unprecedented poor response to it.
There were no plows on Sunday, and we didn’t see any on Monday either. Watching the news , everyone is blaming the mayor and his administration. The mayor is pointing fingers at the abandoned cars, but they were never a problem ever before. The question noone is answering is “where were the plows?”
jeff_williams
How often do major snowstorms happen around there? Maybe there just isn’t enough equipment to go around. After the last Snowmageddon in MN it took a couple days to get plowed curb to curb but snow is a regular occurrence for us.
Ethan@OPC
MD is never really equipped to deal with any amount of snow, so when it happens everything just comes to a halt. Last winter we didn’t get a snow plow for at least a week so neighbors worked together to dig out our court.
Stuart
NYC gets several smaller snow storms a year, with high volume storm every other year or so. I remember there being snow as deep as this, but the city was never shutdown to this extent.
The snowfall was gradual, so there should have been plowing and salting as it came down.
My mother thinks that Bloomberg didn’t want to pay for Sunday/holiday overtime for the plowers and sanitation workers, my father thinks the layoffs left the city with too few workers, and I think that it was a combination of poor planning and cost-saving measures.
People around here are used to quick road clearing, which is why some were overconfident and thought they could drive through 1-2 feet of snow. But many of those stuck drivers are complete morons with no common sense.
fred
I saw that th Long Island Railroad was also shut down – claiming third rail problems – but some of their trains are diesels (aren’t they) so something else might be in play here. I suspect that costs are the big issue – with governments and agencies like the MTA that runs the railroad being strapped for cash.
KMR
I spent the weekend in SE PA, where about a foot fell over a 12 hour period. This storm should have been a managable event, especially as the snow ended in the early hours of Monday morning in SE PA. I left to head back to Syracuse NY at 2:30PM Monday, and I was still passing cars that had just went off the roads because of the poor road conditions. Where plows had been, there was no salt, and the roads were not scraped down to pavement.
I think one of the failures of this storm was the flip-flop forecasting. When we left to go down to PA on Thursday all I heard about was that the storm models were taking the storm out to sea and that this would be a minmal / no snow event (even though the day previously, Wednesday, they were anticipating a large impactful snow storm). Still on Friday, the call for a major storm was minimal. Late Friday night the models began to show a trend for the storm track to move closer to the coast, still no forecaster was willing to commit to more than 1-3″ of snow. On Saturday morning NO ONE was forecasting anything new, because (presumably) the majority of the news and weather staff had off for the holiday. Saturday mid-day was the first time I saw only one of the Phila media outlets post a map calling for about a foot of snow, the other networks were still re-playing Friday nights conservative calls. Finally, Friday evening (6-7PM) were all of the Phila networks on the same page… most likely because the NWS was issuing blizzard warnings by then.
So in Philadelphia, the lack of awareness and short preparation time caught everyone off gaurd. Then the poor clean-up response made things worse because people expect the roads to be taken care of within 6-12 hours of the final flake landing. The winds didn’t help. I was on Roosevelt Blvd (12 lanes wide!) in Philadelphia around 10AM on Monday and blowing snow made some of the more exposed sections difficult to travel through in NE Philadelphia.
I would also suspect that the cost variable also contributed to the poor response. Here in upstate NY my house is on a state road. Last winter the plow/salt trucks would come through at 30-45 minute intervals. This winter, which has been far worse (73″ of snow already in December, winter average is normally 120″), the trucks are coming through at 3-4 hour intervals. In PA I don’t know why the local governments weren’t salting, if you plow like they did and don’t get to the pavement, then you have a sunny afternoon on Monday like it was when I left, you just create a giant hard ice sheet on Monday night.
Overall, moderate storm, made memorable by the errant forecasting and poor clean-up. If our car didn’t have Blizzaks mounted as we always run here in upstate NY, I wouldn’t have been out driving around in PA that Monday morning, the roads were far worse than anything I see here in central NY.
Stuart
More and more people are pointing to budget cuts as a major factor in this screwup.
Someone emailed in to the news channel and said “this is how the MTA will justify the next rate increase.” Train service is still severely affected and even disabled in the outer boroughs where tracks are above ground.
I took the subway everyday for four years back in high school. There were bad snowstorms, although I don’t remember any blizzards or the such. At the very worst, my trains were on a weekend schedule.
Now it’s 2 1/2 days later, and many roads are still blocked around here. A salt/sand truck came by with their plow half-up earlier. Nobody’s come around since.
Unbelievable…
KMR, the forecasts did call for heavy snow. The day before I drove home, my parents kept warning about a blizzard and pending nor’eastern.
KMR
You have a short term memory, as with all of the forecasters who claim they nailed it now. Secondly, my experience and observations were speaking of the Philadelphia area. There was a 36-hour period Wed/Thursday prior to the start of the holiday weekend that the upstate NY forecasters and the Philadelphia area forecasters had moved the storm off the coast, sparing the Philadelphia and inland regions – while still taking the storm over eastern LI and clobbering New England (eastern CT, RI, Mass., Maine).
Since I’m a weather nerd, the only model on Thursday that gave a significant damaging storm to all of the major metros on the east coast was the UKMET model.
I did find one Phila media outlet with a story on the forecasting troubles – they always find a way to cover their @ss!
KMR
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/weather/stories/Predcition-Prcess-Snow-Storm-112456029.html
Stuart
Nope, my memory isn’t failing me. I remember briefly checking the weather and seeing snowy icons. And then on the 24th my mother warned me that I might not want to drive in Sunday because of the pending “nor’easthern.” And on the 25th, my wife, mother, and everyone else said that a blizzard was forecast for Monday. I never claimed to have seen heavy snow predictions on Wednesday or Thursday.
Looking at this page and several following ones, it looks like a foot or more of snow was predicted as possible 2-days ahead of the storm, and about 24-30 hours ahead of time heavy snow and blizzard conditions were predicted.
This is not the first time the city’s been surprised by heavy snow, nor is it the first time snow fell after a major holiday. Even considering that perhaps the storm’s timing and relatively short notice hampered early plowing efforts, there’s no excuse for unplowed secondary roads nearly 60 hours after most of the snow accumulation.
Rachel
I remember a winter when you were about 8 years old. The forecast
was for 2-4 inches of snow. We got about 18 inches of snow. We were
unable to open either the front or the back door. So, we opened a window
in the dining room dressed you up in winter gear and had you go out the
window to go to the front door and open it for us. Even at that time, the
plows were out and about and our streets were plowed. Another time,
in the winter of 1995, when we were hit with 2-3 feet of snow, the
plows were about, the trains were running on weekend schedule and
life went on. I hope that if we are hit with another blizzard/storm, the
sanitation department will be on top of things, rather than trying to have
a work slowdown. Rucha
Kevin
Bloomberg cut corners and the city paid dearly. Everyone knew this storm was coming and the city didnt prepare, it’s not like 1969 when the forecasters called for rain and botched the forecast entirely . Everyone had this storm locked down 2 days in advanced. Bloomberg is now trying to pass the blame on unions, citizens leaving cars out in streets, etc, but the onus is on the Mayor.
As far as the work stoppage excuse, this is an easy fix, do what the city of Buffalo does, gps tag every vehicle.Buffalo can tell the location, speed and if the plow is engaged on every one of their trucks.
Also Bloomberg needs to knock it off with all the pie in the sky ideas of windmills and waterfalls on the Brooklyn bridge ,the banning of smoking in parks, salt, and soda, and get back to the basics of garbage and snow removal. Mayors should be focused on balancing budgets and making sure city services are working, everything else is is just silly nonsense.