New York City, February 4, 2015

★★★ Great lightweight sheets of ice came flipping down through the air from the very top of the glass tower, end over end over end over end, to shatter on the pavement far below. The sky was gray with a few blue weak spots in it. Out on 67th Street, ice from a treetop clunked on the roof and windshield of a parked Budget van. A man at the back of the crowd boarding the 1 train turned and spat a thick white clot toward the base of the station wall, narrowly missing or not missing a boot cutting through the space behind. At Columbus Circle, another man, not just full-grown but graying, waited on the platform with a salt-and-grime crusted red plastic scooter. Downtown, puddles in basins of curbside ice reflected the dull sky. Chips of ice perched in the branches of the planter-boxed shrubbery; ice bulged at the top curve of the dripping bodega awning. Nowhere was the snow deep or soft enough to kick clean the toe of the boot, just in case. By afternoon, something like sun was shining, and then outright sun. By late day the streets were so wet with meltwater it seemed a shower must have just passed.