New York City, January 4, 2018

★★★★ It was not really possible to see the street where the closed school was, some two and a half blocks away. The snow was a smoke cloud, with little fast-moving thicker and thinner parts adding up to a blank gray whole. Figures picked their way along the dark trampled middle of the sidewalk. Out in it, the blown flakes were soft against the exposed part of the face, and the accumulation was soft underfoot. The drifts had wavy crests running along them. People were out and moving; the trains ran fine. The only locus of suffering was the Apple Store, with a closed notice at the door and workers dealing with a gleaming sheet of water on the floor. A bluish fog of snow came down through the grate onto the subway tracks. Rather than having been enchanted to a standstill, the city seemed pressed by the storm down to some active essence. After sundown, the snow was invisible but could still be felt very lightly on the face. The wind coming along behind it had nothing gentle about it at all.