New York City, January 27, 2015

★★★★ What the daylight revealed was a letdown, indisputably — a historic letdown, a ludicrous scene of ordinariness: walkways already shoveled clear; cars showing their flanks and hubcaps. Maybe there was still some fine snow blowing, but who cared? Looking out the window was like making eye contact with someone who had just been badly embarrassed. Yet was this snow the governor? Was this snow the things people had said about the storm or done around the storm? Or was it merely new and substantial and clean? The three-year-old went out to play with a friend and came back scarlet-cheeked, eating snow from the back of a mitten, resigned to the loss of a Batman figure somewhere in the playground drifts. Most things have a disappointment in them. The noodles in the cold-case ramen package, picked up the day before in the panic line at the store, had sprouted mold. Out in the late afternoon someone walked along the bare wet sidewalk carrying cross-country skis and poles, heading for someplace where snow would be. A plastic toboggan and saucer were coming home from the other direction. A fat-bellied two-ball snowman with cups for features stood beside the bus shelter. The statues by the fountain wore little white hats of snow. Out the window now, one had to admit the snow lay prettily enough on the far side of the Hudson. And then a brilliant little ray of orange shot under the edge of the clouds to decorate the buildings to the west, and then the three-year-old stood marveling at the colors surging out of the west, orange boiling into pink, a phenomenon beyond the scope of the record books.