Josh Marshall engages in some uncharacteristically dumb “snow journalism”:
In New York City, there seems to be some level of scandal brewing over the city being wholly unprepared for the storm.
I doubt that NYC was “wholly unprepared” for the storm. I suppose they are prepared for the average snowfall in the area, and they just experienced something way out of the ordinary (32 inches in less than a day, as shown on the video from nearby Belmar, NJ, is more than the average annual snowfall of 28 inches for New York City). Here in Rochester, we prepare for far worse, because we generally get far worse, but we also pay a lot more for plows, crews and salt.
Those are the ugly facts, but when the snow starts falling, they go out the window. The city is “unprepared”. It’s a “snowpocalypse”. No, it’s a “tradeoff”, something that even smart journalists like Josh Marshall seem incapable of reporting about.
That said, the way to get around stupid journalism is to get out a shovel, as one of the smarter urban politicians in the country, Cory Booker, demonstrates on his Twitter feed.
kindness
I didn’t know you were in Rochester. Never paid much attention in that respect, no offense.
Genesee Cream Ale…..That’s what I think of when I think Rochester. That and Kodak. Drank more than a little of it in college in Ithaca.
Hawes
Well, it’s not like Marshall devoted more than an independent clause to it. This was just an add on to the somewhat hilarious piece about New Jersey’s executive branch being in Florida and – gasp – Mexico.
If there is a “scandal brewing” and Marshall mentioned it… I guess I don’t get the journalistic malfeasance.
valdivia
I am a Booker fangirl have been since I saw the documentary of his first failed run for Mayor.
I can’t wait for him to kick Christie’s ass in 2013, though he may stay and extra term in Newark.
Ash Can
Scandal? If it gets Mike
BilandicBloomberg tossed from City Hall and Hillary elected in his place, get back to me.Chris Wolf
Josh is the sanest man on the interwebs.
some other guy
TalkingPointsMemo’s has turned into the political equivalent of a celebrity gossip rag the last few years. It’s like People magazine for poli-sci nerds.
New Yorker
@kindness:
I spent many a cold winter weekend night in Ithaca guzzling Genny Cream Ale by the case too. I later discovered that you can get it in bottles in Rochester (I only saw it in cans in Ithaca).
Morbo
Damn, someone get this man a hot chocolate!
ChrisS
We’re #4! We’re #4! We’re #4! We’re #4!
But we have the largest snow plow in the world:
http://www.syracuse.com/weather/snow/stories/index.html
Whenever I fly during the winter months, I get comments and cracks about how difficult it must be to fly into and out of the Syracuse airport. But it’s not. I’ve never ever had a flight delayed more than 30 minutes or canceled because of weather into or out of SYR. Never. And while I don’t fly a ton, I’ve still racked up more than 70,000 miles (through mostly short regional trips) in the last three years. Every time I’ve had delays or cancellations, it’s been other airports failing to get the airframe in/out or closing.
New Yorker
As for this….
…um, it was a huge, vicious blizzard. The National Weather Service told people not to go out in it because of the possibility that trains could stall or cars could get stuck in snow. And whaddya know, assholes went out in it, got their cars stuck, and thus prevented the plows from being able to remove the snow.
The city wasn’t unprepared, it was just overwhelmed by the size and intensity of the storm. I’m sure San Francisco is well-prepared for an earthquake, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be chaos and problems should a repeat of the 1989 quake hit.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Hyperbole – it’s what’s for dinner.
It would be nice if they were relegated to the opinion section, but it’s one thing we all have to read around. But one sentence in an entire article, meh.
Kudos should definitely be given to Booker. I saw some posts yesterday about him going out in the snow to deliver diapers.
srv
change
Seems to me NYC could use a little global warming eh?
satby
Well, in all fairness, a mayor got tossed out of office in Chicago years ago when there was a poor response to a huge snowstorm, and they happen much more often there too. Lack of services always upsets people who are used to them, which is why it never fails to amaze me how people don’t get that when they vote Repug.
Villago Delenda Est
“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” — Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain.
Chyron HR
@change:
Back again to share the Holy Denial of Global Warming, as handed down by Saint Beck, eh? Don’t forget to do 100 Hail Sarahs as repentance for even uttering those forbidden words.
calling all toasters
Wow. Correctly reporting about the anger towards the NYC response is “dumb” but believing that a city can dig itself out with shovels is “smart”? I guess, by those standards, that this was really a “smart” post.
valdivia
wonder why my comment is awaiting moderation
hmmm.
Karmakin
Which of course, is why they don’t call it global warming now but climate change. One of the predicted results of this is more intense storms. Which we are seeing.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@change: I’m curious, change, how your refrigerator makes ice without energy?
FPer: Comment #9 stuck in moderation.
mk3872
Not to mention that TPM is all over Christie this week for having the gall to go on vacation when a blizzard came in after he left.
“Snow politics”? Gimme a stinkin’ break. Not EVERYTHING in the world is political!!
srv
Friend in San Diego decided to take the family to South Africa for the holidays. Diverted to Shannon Ireland on the 19th. They finally arrived Sunday, via Dubai.
John Bird
Look, if something in New York City can be a city government scandal, it will be.
Exurban Mom
Cory Booker is awesome. He’s out digging people out of the blizzard personally. My favorite tweet of his so far?
Thanks 4 asking, back killing me: Breakfast: Advil and diet coke RT @itsmywayRob Hows ur back from lifting car last night? I hope u’re OK
mistermix
@calling all toasters: No, it’s dumb to think that a mayor with a shovel is going to make a difference. But Cory Booker is smart enough to know that journalists are just that dumb, so he takes to the streets making a tiny dent in a major storm with a shovel, and tweets about it relentlessly. Dumb journalists eat that shit up, so he’s inoculated from the “wholly unprepared” recriminations.
kindness
@New Yorker: You say ‘cold’ and ‘winter’ like they aren’t joined at the hip up there. They are. One thing about western NY….it storms a bunch. Lake effect snow. Somehow it always seemed as if the rain (and snow) was coming down at a 45 degree angle with high winds to boot.
mistermix
@Hawes: I doubt that it would make any difference if Chris Christie were in Trenton or if he was sitting on the dark side of the moon, so I think that part of the post is dumb, too.
ChrisS
@Karmakin:
Meh, over the course of the record, NYC/Boston/Washington DC, all get pelted once or twice a year with a massive Nor’easter. That’s where their season snow totals come from, a storm or two. They don’t get hit every year because, like hurricanes, a winter storm’s path tends to bounce around a bit and it can completely miss some population centers.
While basic storm physics suggests that storms could be more intense in a warming climate (warmer oceans, more energy), most regional models don’t replicate that due to the resolution of the model (>200 km^2). Also there are negative feedbacks (like greater wind shear) that can push storm intensity in the other direction.
mem from somerville
Hmmm….where would a “government doesn’t work” frame come from….??
In Boston this was a top-10 snow storm. It was big. It was serious. And the wind was phenomenal. It was unusual. But we’re ok. Sore from shoveling, but ok. But we’re up again already.
And yes, some flights got cancelled. It happens. It’s a giant interconnected system that takes a little while to right itself again. And that’s a _private_ system.
Sigh.
New Yorker
@Chyron HR:
What I find amusing about the global warming denialists is how they fall dead silent in the summer. A big blizzard hits the east coast? OMFG, global warming is a hoax!!!
But what happens when record heat waves hit in July, or when NYC gets struck by three tornadoes in one summer (as happened this past year)? Crickets….
Now making arguments about climate based on weather events (blizzards, heat waves, tornadoes) is stupid, but hey, if the denialist crowd is so eager to be hoist on their own petard, I’m not going to complain….
ulee
Brooklyn got 24 inches. They weren’t unprepared. They got hit by a blizzard. Get a clue Josh.
gbear
@Chris Wolf: Nope, that title goes to Steve Benen.
Heck, even the Twin Cities in MN took some heat for not being prepared for the 17-20″ snowstorm that collapsed the Metrodome (and our total snowfall for December 2010 set a record). As said above, when that much snow shows up at one time, cleanup doesn’t always go smoothly and patience is mandatory. Enjoy it while it’s pretty.
Cheryl from Maryland
@satby: Bilandic was tossed because of his apparent callousness to those stuck in the snow. I was in Chicago in late 1979 for grad school, and people were still incensed about it — including at the Art Institute student show where there were talking sculptures of Bilandic and his wife — saying “Boy look at all the snow,” and “Put another log on the fire Heather.”
To be fair to the man, he set up the Chicago Marathon and Chicago Fest, but 35″ of snow in 2 days shortly before the primary did him in.
dmsilev
@change: You’re about as original as a scratched LP.
(wonder how long that reference will last in the language)
dms
BrklynLibrul
I’ll come to the defense of my fellow New Yorker, JMM. There were significant and unusual problems with this storm — and, more importantly, the city’s response — beyond the intensity of the wind and snow. The model of winter event preparedness, New York has ably dealt with stronger blizzards than this one, with armies of snowplows typically massed and moving through the streets before the last flake falls. But not this time. Manhattan has been, um, well tended while here in the outer boroughs there are many, many blocks still buried, with nary a snowplow in sight. Some reports have mentioned that ETMs couldn’t reach apartment buildings when responding to 9-1-1 calls, and were forced to triage patients on icy sidewalks. The subway always, always runs, even with 30+ inches on the ground, but this time there were systemic problems on virtually every line, adversely affecting people who depend on public transportation.
When Mayor Bloomberg was asked about it, he commented that tourists were crowding the (Manhattan) stores, people were heading to (Manhattan) theaters, and that (Manhattan) life goes on. There are some fundamental local government issues at stake here, especially for an administration that trumpets its competence and ability to get things done.
daveNYC
It didn’t seem like NYC had issues with the storm. Roads were partially plowed on Monday, and today most things seem to be clear. Can’t speak for the outer boroughs though. Were people really expecting umpteen inches of snow to get dumped on us and there would be zero impact?
JimF
I live in Rochester as well. It’s a small world.
change
I wonder how many liberals know that the density of the polar ice caps has actually INCREASED since 2007?
But nevermind the truth. I’m a heretic! I deny Algore! Buy carbon credits and burn me at the stake using zero-emissions wood for Mother Earth!
ChrisS
@change:
And gasoline demand in the US has decreased since 2007.
It’s a stat that when used in complete isolation, as if the previous thirty years didn’t exist, and without context, can imply the exact opposite of the larger statistical record.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
You buried the lede — it’s Booker, out there doing the job, and leveraging Twitter to help more folks, that’s the real damned story.
Josh needs to soak his head in some melted snow, that’s all.
elmo
I keep reading these stories about 24″ of snow here, or 32″ of snow there, and shaking my head. Seriously? Back home in Mammoth, they got 14 feet of snow in four days (Friday 12/17 – Monday 12/20), and everybody I know made it to work on time.
When I first moved there, a quick little spring storm dropped three feet of snow on the Sunday night before my first day of work. I didn’t yet have a shovel, having moved there from Southern California. So Monday morning, I dug my car out with a dustpan. True story.
Snow that’s measured in inches is barely worth putting on boots for.
sparky
hmmm…it’s a throwaway line, so i am unclear as to why it is worthy of a post. that said, after looking around in the papers, there is a bit of a rumble of complaint because apparently Bloomie only thinks Manhattan is worth plowing. and now there is even an NPR story about it, so it is probably a genuine complaint at the bottom of it all. so he’d best get on it, before people change his name to John Lindsay and his mayor for life scheme gets…buried.
gene108
@ChrisS:
Also read the melting of fresh water ice caps will (has?) slowed down the warming effect of the Gulf Stream on Europe. The effect would be two fold. Europe gets colder, but with no cold water coming back to the Americas, our ocean water gets warmer and have more energy to fuel more intense storms.
Anyway, I take the long view. Once the continents smash back together in the Eastern hemisphere, in 300 million years, much of what we do now will be moot; the weather patterns we fret so much about now will be obsolete.
Plate tectonics trumps ocean circulation and ocean carbon sequestering in the long run :-)
Church Lady
A friend just called me. She’s in New York, on the outer tip of Long Island, visiting her mother-in-law. She said it’s bad out there – they got the car dug out, but can’t go anywhere because the main road hasn’t been plowed yet. She said (and I quote): “They weren’t prepared.”
res ipsa loquitur
I thought the same thing when I saw Marshall’s comment. I live in the city. On Christmas morning, the forecast was for snow late the next day, with the bulk of the snow falling far east of the city. By Christmas night, the forecast had changed completely. That’s not that many hours to mobilize for a major storm when you were expecting to get grazed. I’ve been out this morning and I have to say that with one exception, things are fairly under control. The exception is that literally thousands of daytrippers from the suburbs have checked their brains at the door and come into the city for their annual Christmas visit to see the Rock Centre Xmas tree or whatever. Get a grip, people! You’re not helping.
Chris Wolf
@ulee:
OK, 1000 city buses got stranded in the blizzard, untold numbers of cars got stranded behind those buses.
Yeah, it was a blizzard, but I’m thinking someone should have been smart enough to shut down the buses a lot earlier.
ChrisS
@gene108:
Well, I don’t fret about weather. Climate has me worried. Watch what happens when a billion people are displaced because of an extended famine or droughts. Ethiopia in 1984-85 times 100.
Most countries don’t take kindly to starving immigrants.
Ash Can
@change: When you start being serious you’ll be treated accordingly.
burnspbesq
@mistermix:
This is brilliant politics by Booker. Voters will remember this (and Booker’s next campaign will be sure to remind them).
ChrisS
@Church Lady:
Not necessarily directed at you, but the thing is that it’s not the end of the world. Christ, it’ll be 60 by this weekend. Being prepared outside of seriously snowy cities means having enough food & water for three days, warm blankets, and entertainment. Yeah, it’s an inconvenience. Life sucks. I live in a city that handles much much more snow than anywhere else with a population greater than 100k. If it’s going to be bad out, I stay in. In 2002, I ate chinese and went and saw a LoTR movie on Christmas day because I wouldn’t chance driving to my Mom’s (an hour away and I had a jeep at the time).
What city/town/county/village budget is going to have enough snow plow drivers on hand for an emergency 36 hour shift?
If a person doesn’t want to worry about the occasional snow fall, move to Houston.
Ruckus
@elmo:
I’ve shoveled snow in Mammoth and shoveled snow in the east and what you seem to be missing is the water content. That 24″ usually weighs a whole lot more than 4 or 5 ft of that beautiful powder in Mammoth. Moving the snow in the east is a lot harder. Digging my car out of 6-8 ft of powder takes a while, but not nearly as long as digging out of 2-3 inches of ice under 6 inches of snow.
Maude
@Ruckus:
Also if the snow has been plowed from the road and is at the end of your driveway. That can be heavy and difficult to shovel.
elmo
@Ruckus:
A fair point, certainly a fair point, and one I hadn’t even thought about. We did sometimes have super heavy snow, when I could barely lift a shovelful, and I would complain bitterly that it was going to take me forever to dig out.
Dang. There goes my smug superiority all smashed to bits!
:)
And when, by God, did you live in Mammoth? If it was in the 90’s or early oughts, we prob’ly know each other.
elmo
@Maude:
Oh heck, sometimes you can’t shovel through that — it’s a solid iceberg.
Jay C
A couple of observations re “snow politics”:
1) Josh Marshall’s line about “scandal” was pretty much a throwaway: yes, I agree he’s one of the saner voices on the Intertubez, but a one-sentence comment shouldn’t be made too much of….
2) I watched the whole storm from my window on W86 St.; other than a relative scarcity of plowing until early Monday morning, the City’s “response” didn’t seem too much different than usual. Nor, it should be said, is the standard “Manhattan plowed while Outer Boroughs buried” meme that gets trotted out after every major snowstorm in the area: it’s a bummer for a lot of folks who live away from the main avenues to be sure, but nothing new or different.
3) What WAS different this time were the problems with rail transport: I can’t recall a blizzard where so many trains of various sorts were halted or broke down. Whether it was just a fluke, or an indication of serious infrastructure problems ought to seriously looked into.
toujoursdan
@change:
2009: Second Warmest Year on Record; End of Warmest Decade
Science Daily: Massive Arctic Ice Cap Is Shrinking, Study Shows; Rate Accelerating Since 1985
Google is your friend. Your friend will give you articles covering whole towns falling into the permafrost in northern Canada, Alaska and Siberia; rising tides in Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Maldives; shrinking glaciers in the Alps, Himalayas and the Andes. You can stick your fingers in your ear and scream la-la-la until you’re blue in the face, it’s not going to change what’s happening. This isn’t a liberal vs. conservative issue. Stop treating facts like opinions.
I’m in Brooklyn and was awaken at 3 am during the height of the storm by idiots trying to rev their engines and tires to get out of the storm. One went to hospital because of Carbon Monoxide poisoning. Others got stuck in the middle of streets.
Today there are still abandoned cars on the road. The ploughs are not going to be able to clear those streets until they are removed.
I don’t blame the city. I blame the idiots. They are no different than idiots anywhere.
Hawes
Two points:
The NYC scandal: If the issue is about preferential treatment for Manhattan over the other boroughs, then that is a legitimate political issue. The allocation of public resources is inherently a political question.
The NJ scandal: To me, it’s the fact that they went to all the trouble to create a Lt. Governorship and they were both out of the state at the same time. Christie wants to go to Disney World to yell at the unionized Goofies, fine. But considering they just recently created a Lt. Governor’s post for exactly situations like this, someone screwed up. And the screw-up is political.
PurpleGirl
I live about 1 mile or so from LaGuardia. Throughout the day Friday I kept looking at the NOAA projections and they had snow starting Friday and falling throughout Saturday. I went to the food store Friday about noon for things I’d forgotten on Thursday and it was just starting to dust lightly and when I came out 20 minutes or so later, it was coming down heavier. The wind was fierce all weekend. I’d say the real problem at the airports was the wind — they couldn’t keep the runways clear, the snow kept being blown around.
I also think that anybody who went out it they didn’t have to was stupid; not crazy, stupid. The weather agencies and predictions companies had been talking about the storm coming for a few days, we had time to buy food and supplies. To go out Christmas day was stupid if you didn’t have to.
I know Bloomberg toured the city yesterday, but the outer boroughs usually have more problems than Manhattan will. I don’t know what the lesson from Lindsay is in context, Bloomberg can’t run for another term right now, but these are the people who bought his lines, voted for him and they will remember in other contexts, other races, I think.
Redshirt
I don’t give them credit often, but Eastern Mass handled the storm as well as could be expected. Roads were remarkably passable early monday morning.
The winds kept them hopping, but they used the lead time to good advantage.
change
@toujoursdan:
Maybe the earth is warming, maybe it isn’t, but it warmed also in the Middle Ages LONG before fossil fuels were used.
It’s cyclical.
BTW, you can’t stop people consuming carbon. The Chinese are buying cars–and big ass SUVs–at an ever increasing rate and one new coal plant comes online every DAY in China. Even if we shut down all industrial activity in the US it would have very, very little impact.
debbie
I was living in Manhattan during the 1993 blizzard, and it took the city awhile to dig out, so I can sympathize with the hassles, but I think it’s unrealistic to expect the city will be back to normal quickly. I also was once stuck on the subway (in summer without a/c) for an hour, so I can understand why there would be a lot of people upset by even the thought of being trapped overnight without heat.
I remember walking down Second Avenue in the middle of the day and being struck by just how quiet it was. People ought to take the opportunity to get over to Central Park while it’s all still beautiful, before the snow turns gray.
Sean
Exactly what we experienced here in Park Slope, Brooklyn. They just got around to plowing even the main arteries here last night. For some reason every part of the city outside of Manhattan was neglected all day yesterday. That’s not expected, and certainly the City should have done better.
andy
Three feet is a fuck~ton of snow. We got a similar amount up here in Minnesota years ago on a Halloween.
We were better prepared to deal with this stuff (up on the Iron Range) but it still tied things up for days, even though in the end the city had to contract for front end loaders and dump trucks from local builders.
See, the thing is, if the temperature had been a few degrees the other way all you would have had was a rainy day. Ever since the weather started going crazy about 10-15 years ago we’ve seen a lot of situations like this- except where we were normally expecting a blizzard we did get rain days instead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Blizzard
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40964542@N08/sets/72157623470807513/with/4423622378/
kindness
@Ruckus: That’s funny. It isn’t like Utah or Colorado snow out here. My Tahoe friends call it Sierra cement. More often than not it is less powdery than places where it is colder.
Nellcote
@mistermix:
You make it sound like a photo-op when the guys doing actual physical labor and assessing the situation from the ground. Yes, it’s a good political move but it’s also actually helpful to his constituents.
Nick
@mk3872:
I’m not mad at Christie, but why is the Lt. Governor of vacation at the same time. She exists to step in when Christie is away. And her bullshit excuse is “Oh, they pay me as Secretary of State”
WTF?
New Yorker
@change:
Aaaand here it is, the point at which the denialist stops denying and switches over to “well, we can’t do anything about it anyway”.
Well, is it happening or not? You idiots should get your stories straight. It’s like the 9/11 truthers: was it a missile that hit the Pentagon, or was it AA 77? Did explosives bring down the WTC, or was it thermite, and so on.
jpe
Local media is doing its darnedest to find a scandal angle on this. @ 62: that’s where I am, too. Fun stuff, this snow.
toujoursdan
@change:
So which is it?
Are the caps getting thicker or thinner? Is the earth warming or cooling?
Why can’t you keep your assertions straight? Why is it when they are debunked does the conversation so quickly change to “We can’t do anything about it.”?
The difficult fact for you here is that has been known since the 1930s that Carbon Dioxide and Methane are greenhouse gases. Put more of them into the atmosphere and they trap more heat from the sun, leading to climate change.
World CO2 levels at record high, scientists warn. The world’s temperature is rising along with this increasing concentration of CO2. Put two and two together and you get the culprit.
Sure, there may be cyclical factors as well, but it doesn’t change the fact that C02 and CH4 have certain physical and chemical properties and that we’re seeing just what we’d expect when they build up in the atmosphere.
If we cut back on the production of CO2 and CH4 then those cyclical factors will have less of an impact on our food supply, our infrastructure and our civilization. It will cost YOU less in taxes to maintain our food supply, infrastructure, etc. from the added expense of climate change if we do something about it now.
We can work with the Chinese AND cut back at the same time. It’s not either/or. Given that we have approached peak oil production nature is going to force us to cut back on carbon production anyway. We can either do it on our terms by adopting a greener lifestyle, or on her’s when oil becomes too expensive to bring to market and we fall into a depression.
You’re entitled to your opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts. The chemical properties of gases aren’t a liberal vs. conservative issue. They are hard facts.
Adrienne
Also, can we all keep in mind that this happened on a Sunday….on the day after Christmas?!?! There weren’t enough plows because there probably weren’t enough people here to run them. If, say, 15% of their workforce took holiday vacation and were stranded elsewhere, who the hell was supposed to plow?
Look, I live in Brooklyn and honest to FSM it’s a fucking nightmare. My street *still* hasn’t been plowed. At all. The main streets have been somewhat cleared where there weren’t cars stuck because some idiot w/ a ’98 Honda decided he had a run to make. Last night coming from Philadelphia on Amtrak was a mess and once I got to Brooklyn I wished I’d stayed in Philly. It was a perfect storm of fucked-up-edness all around: Sunday after Christmas + frequently changing forecast + more snow than expected + bitter wind = Pandemonium.
David in NY
I’ve lived in Brooklyn for nearly 30 years, and I’ve seen three to five storms of this general strength (the kind that knock out the Coney Island subway line, which is in a trench that, predictably, fills up with snow). This is the first one I’ve seen in which the main streets near me, Church and Flatbush, the biggest in central Brooklyn, have really not been cleared two days after the storm hit. There is stuff like two buses simply abandoned either side of the corner of Church and Flatbush, a police car abandoned at Rogers, a snowplow (i.e. a garbage truck with plow attached) unable to move. And yet, I don’t think there was a full 2 feet of snow, excepting drifts.
I think the storm was big and hit quickly, but it’s over, and I think they’re not getting the job done. I can’t fathom why Flatbush, a main artery to Manhattan, is in as bad shape as it is. (The excuse they give for clearing Manhattan first is that it has more “arterial” roadway, but surely that suggests that they should be clearling such roadway in all the boroughs.) So I think some complaints are warranted. A lot of people took yesterday off, but things should have been getting back to normal today, and they aren’t.
toujoursdan
I also live in Brooklyn, near Atlantic and Clinton.
I think we’re in a situation where, until tow trucks haul the cars out, the streets can’t be ploughed, but the tow trucks can’t haul the cars out until they can get there through ploughed streets.
Adrienne
@David in NY: I can’t believe that Flatbush hasn’t been plowed. Similarly, Nostrand (!) wasn’t fully plowed yesterday and Eastern Parkway was ok, but the streets off of the Parkway weren’t: Nostrand, New York, etc. I’d need both hands to count how many abandoned MTA buses I passed as I circled around last night trying to find a clear street to take down to Brooklyn Avenue to my house.
I agree that there are reasons for complaints. But, this is the 5th worst storm in NYC history and it happened on the day after Christmas. I agree (to an extent) that the City wasn’t prepared, but I don’t think there is anything else they could have done. Many city workers are/were out of town, and there were tourists/visitors who were stuck here trying to get out. It really is a clusterfuck out there.
Andy K
@Adrienne:
This!
New Yorker
@Adrienne:
On that note, Nassau Ave. in Greenpoint (which is a snow emergency route) was littered with abandoned cars yesterday, as well as two buses that had been stuck there since Sunday evening. Needless to say, none of the side streets were passable. I have no idea how things were on major arteries like Meeker Ave. or McGuinness Blvd.
Today Nassau looks passable, although it still doesn’t look like it has been completely plowed.
Things are a mess all across Brooklyn (and probably Queens, the Bronx, and SI).
Nick
@Adrienne:
It’s understandable that it with the holiday (and the layoffs) the cleanup was going to be tough. I predicted as much, but it would have been nice to hear the mayor said “Hey, this is going to be the most difficult storm we’ve ever had to clean up from because of the timing of it”
I mean be honest with the people. How hard is that? Cory Booker was.
MaximusNYC
I’m in Kensington, Brooklyn, and it’s a mess here too. Ocean Parkway was clear, and they kept scraping each new millimeter of snow off it with snowplows coming by hourly… but they didn’t plow Ditmas Avenue, a fairly sizable cross street, nor did they plow any of the smaller streets.
Yes, to some degree there’s a chicken-egg problem: some of these streets had cars double-parked or just abandoned in the snow. But then, how do they manage in other storms? I’ve been in NYC for 11 years, and have lived thru 2 other blizzards here (both of which were bigger than this one). This is by far the worst response I’ve witnessed.
kejia
Cities in the South have a similar trade-off, which is similarly misunderstood. The next time we get mocked over being closed down by 1-2 inches of snow, may we throw the blizzard of xmas 2010 in your faces? You told us you could drive in any conditions!
Gustopher
Feh, the Northeast doesnt know a thing about being unprepared in snow. I grew up in Rochester, I lived in NYC, they’re prepared. A bigger storm can take a while, but they dig out amazingly quickly. They might be underprepared for a massive storm, but they’re not unprepared.
Now Seattle, my new hometown, we are unprepared. We coined the term “Snowpocalypse”, to describe the 18 inches of snow that completely shut down the city a couple of winters ago for a week and a half. We just stopped functioning and waited for it to melt.
Nick
@MaximusNYC:
honestly, I’ve been through four other blizzards of this size; 1996, 2003, 2006 and Feb 2010. In all cases, I can’t remember so many cars left abandoned in the streets. I don’t understand why that was suddenly such a problem this time.
In the 2006 situation, it was 60 degrees two days later.
Steeplejack
@Nick:
No data, but I suspect it is related to holiday travelers, or people hosting holiday travelers, thinking they could beat the odds and make it to the airport or out of town.
MattR
@Nick: I think part of the problem was the wind. Plowing in the early hours of the storm was pretty much a wasted effort since it would get blown back onto the streets.
And then throw in the holidays which screwed things up in multiple ways. I am sure the sanitation department was shortstaffed due to some vacations. Then throw in all the people who were gone and left their cars in bad locations. There were also the people who came back right before the storm hit but had no supplies at home and tried to run out before things got too bad. And then lastly you have the idiots who decided that they would try to get home through the storm
Ruckus
@elmo:
Mammoth mid 60’s. I’m older than I look.
New Yorker
@Nick:
That’s my feeling too. I’ve been in Brooklyn since the summer of ’03 and we’ve had some doozy storms in that time (December ’03, February ’05, February ’06) but none of them paralyzed the city the way this one seems to have done.
Ruckus
@kindness:
Tahoe, Mammoth. Not the same thing.
toujoursdan
@Nick:
That’s what I don’t understand either.
We even had abandoned ambulances on my street. It was bizarre.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dantoujours/5300435175/
elmo
@Ruckus:
Holy crap. No offense. :-) That IS back in the day.
Since the thread is nearly dead anyway, I’m going to hijack shamelessly — you must have known Joe and Bonnie Zwart, then? They were the first people I ever met in town, and all by themselves made me fall in love with the place. Amazing, lovely people.
Ruckus
@elmo:
Didn’t know them. Or if I did I have no memory. I actually only was there for a short period of time and I was just old enough to drive. And of course I am horrible with names.
David in NY
@Adrienne: I’m sorry, in my post above it was really only Church that had not been cleared. It seems somewhat better now, but really lagging what I’m used to.
Nick
@Steeplejack: @toujoursdan: @New Yorker: @MattR:
My explanation I think has a lot to do with arrogance. Everyone I talked to in the days before waved off warnings of the blizzard. “Oh the weathermen are always wrong” Then they went out on Sunday and got caught in it. Combine that with the winds, it was just a bad situation. The traffic cameras on the Southern State Parkway in Nassau County were showing people just getting out of their cars in the middle of the highway and walking away.
BrklynLibrul
Just did some recon along Ocean Parkway, kids. Most blocks still buried, even some arterials, and NONE of the side streets plowed. I’ve heard from my wife and others who commuted into Manhattan today — they say the streets there are clear, that it’s a totally different world than Brooklyn. Mayor Mike will take some heat for this, and deservedly so.
asiangrrlMN
@gbear: Ditto this. It was a mess around here when we got the snow dump. Of course, the budget for snow removal has been slashed (as has everything else under Ratface Pawlenty), but it’s still difficult when the snow hits suddenly and furiously.
@valdivia: You and me both, girl. I just started following his twits today. It’s so admirable that he is taking twits and hitting streets personally in response to his constituents. I hope he does eventually become governor of NJ.
Nick
@BrklynLibrul:
We should’ve added recall elections to the City Charter last year. Anthony Weiner can’t become Mayor soon enough.
lol
Okay, I don’t get why people are making fun of TPM for suggesting there could be political fallout.
Just last year, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels finished 3rd in a top two primary because he botched the response to a snow storm earlier that year.
It was an actual campaign issue and it cost him his job.
People get pissed if the government can’t handle emergency response well. Remember, Bush’s handling of Katrina was the tipping point for the public to turn against him. This is any different.
Nick
@lol: Who’s mocking TPM?
lol
@Nick:
“Josh Marshall engages in some uncharacteristically dumb “snow journalism”:”
lurker
No. Just…no. I’ve lived in NYC my whole life; we’ve dealt with worse storms, and the city hasn’t shut down. We haven’t had a really bad one in a while — since Bloomberg took office, if my memory serves, but I might be completely wrong about that — and a lot of things that shouldn’t have happened, did.
Like the new subway cars. Nice and pretty, but apparently they don’t handle moisture very well. Oops.
Or the number of plows out there. Or the coordination of the effort.
NJ went ahead and declared a state of emergency on Sunday afternoon. Bloomberg shrugged it off. (Seriously, NJ making us look bad? There might be nothing worse than this single, cardinal, sin.)
I don’t pretend to be an expert, but the guy who wrote this post seems *really* comfortable taking a very authoritative tone when talking about NYC preparedness. My point is: you don’t know what you’re talking about. New Yorkers’ expectations didn’t come out of nowhere. They arise from years of experience with similar storms. Bloomberg seriously messed up. He should be called on it.
Maybe I’m sensitive about people all across the country (yes, including Upstate; we both know it’s a world of difference) thinking they have a say in local NYC politics (YEARS of this BS now), but my first reaction is this: “Oh, sit DOWN.”
Glinda
@lurker: Ding-ding-ding-ding! You win the prize! You nailed my objection to this silliness before I could even verbalize it.
How can anyone from a distant locale comment with any knowledge on a remote locale’s response to a difficult weather phenomenon? Other than to say “oh, that’s too bad. I hope you are fine”, of course.
I could write a diatribe on the stupid unpreparedness of Bloomberg’s boys during this storm. Note: I’ve lived here 30+ years but I grew up in Buffalo and have a house upstate mid-way to Albany and while those locations are graceful at far worse snowfall, I’ve experienced far worse storms in NYC than this piddling crap. I must admit that around the Christmas holidays NYC storms tend to be lighter than January, February, or early March storms and this was more like a January storm. But suffice it to say, Bloomberg’s boys were asleep at the wheel. It may be that their Sanitation guys were all taking days off at Christmas, but that is no excuse for not putting in place a holiday contingency plan.
This storm was a major fuck up by Bloomberg, evidenced by his “very smart CEO reaction to screwing up” that was his 27-minute blizzard-related news conference in hard-hit Brooklyn this morning on NY1. I admit it was a masterpiece in PR that “Dubya” should have been schooled on years ago, but for us in Bloomberg’s financial industry, the combination of the venue, the length of the news conference, the tone and the digging for the most arcane historical weather statistics was a dead giveaway.
Glonda
BTW: My enjoyment of the time-lapse snow video would have been on a different level altogether if some turkey hadn’t altered it with the fake clock.
Glonda
@Glonda: How the heck did “Glinda” become “Glonda”?
This isn’t the first time it happened. Maybe because I occasionally need to use two different browsers on the same Mac platform.
I must investigate. But it’s only happened on this site. Hmmm …
Glinda
Aha! Got it. My Safari had “Glonda” in the “Name (required)” form field. Perhaps Safari will now remember “Glinda”.
… sorry for the “geek debug aside”.
Steeplejack
@Glinda:
Testing your hypothesis by writing this reply and then closing the browser window before the five-minute timer is up.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
My comment above did not disappear. My browser is Firefox 3.6.13 on Windows XP. Maybe your problem is Safari-specific.
Glinda
@Steeplejack: It was definitely Safari -specific. Thanks for your test!