New York City, February 15, 2016

★★★★ A few coarse snowflakes drifted around in no particular order or direction, then went away. New drips were dripping on the Times Square platform. Downtown the nearly blank sky had darkened by some increment and sparse flakes were falling again. A coiling orange trickle, dried or frozen or freeze-dried to the sidewalk, marked someone’s minor disaster outside a juice restaurant. Steam veiled a truck-and-a-quarter’s worth of two Con Edison trucks standing by an open hole in the street. What was falling was almost too fine to be seen, but the roofs of black vehicles began frosting over. Then it thickened to a recognizable snowfall, one that didn’t need to be hunted against dark backgrounds. The ledge outside the window whitened so gradually that only the shine of the bigger flakes on it betrayed that it wasn’t still concrete. A white van drove down Fifth Avenue with wiper arcs cut through its white windshield. The snow had gone fully picturesque. Gradually it began taking possession of the roadway. The flakes were wet and the air had lost its arctic tightness; the space where the parka half-covered the mouth was unpleasantly humid. Outside Trump Tower the snow was unshoveled, the steps blocked with caution tape. The light reflecting off the sky was lilac. The falling snow had turned back to something unseeable and not far from rain.