(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on February 17, 2024)

 

We haven’t had a decent snowfall in a couple of years, so when this one approached, the TV weather people got all goofy and excited:

“Manhattan may get a foot of snow! Higher totals north and west!”

I’m about 6 miles from northern Manhattan and maybe 10 miles from Midtown. I can see all the way down to the World Trade Center, about 12 miles away. That would make me slightly north and a bit west.

Wow! We’re getting more than a foot of snow!

Then the local headlines started shrinking:

 

It was supposed to start as light rain at midnight, change over to snow at around 5am and snow fairly heavily until around noon. I heard the rain on my bathroom skylight when I went to bed at 12:30am.

I woke up around 6:30am, but instead of going back to sleep, I got up to see if the changeover occurred.

It did and I looked at the parking lot behind my building and saw that two cars had recently left the lot, so rather than shoot later when there’d be dozens of tire tracks, I decided to document the pair of orderly exit tracks made by the early risers.

 

The fading tracks from Space #2 appeared to have been made about a half-hour earlier and head south. You can see the footprints heading to Space #11 and that car’s just-made tracks heading in the opposite direction (and here I am – half-asleep – hanging out my living room window in a t-shirt at 6:30am during a snowstorm shooting a PANO):

(click all PANOs to enlarge)

 

I liked the shot, so I decided to do a wider version:

Bet you didn’t know that there were so many tilted buildings in Hackensack.

 

It began to snow harder, so I ate breakfast and then started to shoot all the mundane things that become more interesting when they’re snow-covered, like this fire escape:

 

 

…and poles that tell you that the wind was blowing from the north, because only that side has snow on it:

 

…or chain-link fencing as each link fills up with white stuff:

 

…or Dish antennas:

 

…or STOP signs:

 

… or bare tree limbs

You can see that the snow is coming in at an angle and looks like it’s about to push that telephone pole over. By the way, that’s some sort of police vehicle with all the little red lights that alternated with blue lights, which were not as photogenic, so you know which one I picked…and I did see an officer get out of the car, but I don’t know why he was there (or why he didn’t have a hat on what appeared to be a bald head………..yikes!).

 

This is the non-functioning bathroom skylight on which I heard the light rain at 12:30am. It’s now showing the most accumulation of snow on its northern end (and yes, two panels are naturally darker):

 

Time to go to a south-facing window…………

 

Know what this is?

It’s an outdoor home basketball hoop that’s hibernating for the winter and it seems that its red rim is scraping the ground. That can’t be good.

 

Nearby on the same property, I think the owners must be putting out food for the birds (I’ve seen this grouping – or a similar one – fairly often):

 

Periodically, something spooks them and they take off and land about 10 feet away…………and then immediately come right back:

 

This looks much more interesting with snow on it:

 

At around 9:30am, I start to see the first signs of life (other than the birds) as this guy comes out to clear his car:

I understand the shovel, but what’s that other item? It looks like most of a music stand.

 

While he’s off conducting the orchestorm, his shovel stands guard while two next-car wipers stand at snow-covered attention:

 

I don’t like the white-on-white of the previous shot, so I waited until the guy came back to provide the wipers with some contrast:

 

Speaking of wipers…………

 

The next-door neighbors of now-vacant Space #8 show large sections of snow sliding off on their own:

Could this signal that the predicted temperature sliding north of 32º is occurring?

 

Meanwhile, my car appears to be getting plowed-in, but that shouldn’t be a problem if I move it during these warming temps:

 

Coatless, short-sleeved Joe Cool clears the snow off his car at 11:30am:

(It ain’t THAT warm, Joe)

 

At around the same time, a family visits to play in the lot. In this PANO triptych, Dad appears to have just dumped snow on the kid’s head, the kid picks up a good chunk of copyrighted snow and asks Dad to crouch down so she can give it to him and then does exactly that…………..down his neck!

Of course, this is just speculation, but I hope I’m right.

 

In this pair-o-pix, Mom takes a photo of kid holding snow as Dad smiles (or grimaces from a neck and back full of snow). As Mom shows the kid the pic, Dad throws snow at both of them:

Meanwhile, kid #2 wonders how she can get out of this family.

 

Just before noon, a woman walks through the lot holding her phone as a snowcyclist whizzes by:

(actually, he was nowhere near her, but they’re similar photos and I had nowhere else to put him, so…………)

 

The woman walked toward a tree and disappeared (I took this shot well after the fact, while her footprints were still visible):

 

All of a sudden, I saw her under a nearby, foliage-free tree that was almost directly below me.

You can see part of her distinctive red-and-white bag, from which she’s apparently pulled out what looks like a wide, children’s illustrated book that she’s holding open with one hand while she takes a picture of it with the other:

“Huh?” and “WTF?” were my first two questions. As you can imagine, “Why did she walk the length of the parking lot in driving snow to stand under a bare tree and take pictures of pages of a children’s book?” was the other query.

 

Looking around the rest of the tree may have provided a possible answer: these 3 beings were looking in her direction. Maybe she was reading to them (as one of them started chewing on my watermark), but her phone was definitely pointed toward the book and the birds were on a higher branch:

It could happen……….LOTS of people read to birds in trees that border a municipal parking lot during a snowstorm at lunchtime, right?

EGAD!

 

I need a break. Fortunately, it’s now noon – time for lunch.

Well, lunch had to wait a bit because I looked out of my west-facing kitchen window and saw two more snow pictures just waiting to be taken – one good and one ugly:

 

After lunch, I went back to the south-facing window in my back room and saw a potentially-nice PANO, but that window has an A/C in it and couldn’t be opened for a really wide PANO, so I took the widest one I could get and I like the way it came out:

Of course, the gorgeous steeple of the First Presbyterian Church is front-and-center, while the Hackensack Middle School is behind it and to its left. To its right on the far corner is the Gentile Funeral Home. I took a closeup picture of something on its property:

If you have a sharp eye, you may have noticed that I reversed its direction from what’s shown in the PANO.

 

 

For the grand foto finale, I went back to my living room picture window and – hanging out the window once again – took a very wide shot straight down 7 floors……..and then stood the photo on its end, so my outside wall is on the left side instead of being on the bottom.

It’s a very long, skinny photo, so be prepared for Scroll City. And if you tell me that it’s garbage, I’d have to agree with you…………….literally.

Ready?

 

It might help to know that my building is H-shaped. My outer wall is the top of the right leg of the H.

Starting at the top of this picture, you can see a pathway coming into the space between the legs(!) and a corner of the left leg by an overcrowded bicycle rack. The footprints are coming from the back door and are heading up to the side street (Ward St). The entire space shown is the “back yard” behind the top of the H.

And it IS totally garbage! As you look at the right side, the first 8 receptacles – which were collected/emptied that morning – are meant for regular garbage.

Below that are 5 round containers for glass, plastic and aluminum recyclables.

Continuing south, there are some big cardboard boxes holding smaller cardboard boxes – also to be recycled.

Then there’s a small tractor, which is used after large snowstorms to clear the property and sidewalks.

At the bottom are two large metal receptacles – one on its side – that, until recently, held all the regular garbage and were a bitch to get up the inclined pathway to Ward St for garbage collection.

On the side by my outer wall, are all the big things that tenants toss out that look much better and less identifiable with a layer of snow on them.

Now – wasn’t that exciting?

 

Later that afternoon, I went out to clear off my car and I have to say, it was one of the easiest clearoffs that I can remember. I removed every bit of snow with a few arm-swipes on either side of the car. The stuff was already melting and guess how much snow this monster storm dumped on Hackensack.

Judging from the height of what was on my car’s roof, we got a grand total of (drum roll, please………….)

 

                                               4-5 inches!

 

 

                                                 Big deal.

 

 

The only consolation is that everything would look worse with a foot of snow on them.

 

For photographic purposes, this was just the right amount.

(you buying this?)