January 23 blizzard pictures & video January 25, 2016

Last Monday, I hinted at the end of my Lisa Hilton post that there could be significant snowfall by the end of the week. And there was.

Whereas the first major storm of last winter was initially supposed to bring up to three feet of snow, then brought half that, this year’s appeared to be destined for six inches at most. But by Thursday night, the forecast began trending toward the worst case scenario. Strong winds were also in play, which brought the flooding fear to waterfront residents and the downed trees and power outages fear to me, an inland resident.

Luckily, the wind wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. There were a few big gusts in the morning, but that was it.

Below is a photographic timeline of Saturday’s blizzard from eight hours after snow began through a few hours before it ended.

8:11 AM:

9:50 AM:

Every few hours, I shoveled the front porch to keep the snow from piling up. I chose to wait until after snow had ended to shovel the rest of the driveway.

1:18 PM:

4:14 PM:

6:28 PM:

9:26 PM, on my iPhone:

9:31 PM:

I tried to go to sleep around 11:30, but I was too eager to shovel. So, with snow still coming down, albeit lightly, I began to shovel the driveway. I made it to the center, the widest part, before giving up.

According to the National Weather Service, 25.1 inches of snow fell in Wantagh, but I measured a few inches less in my driveway.

When I woke up yesterday morning, at around 10:30 AM, I took some pictures:

Then, it was time to shovel. It took three long hours, with a few short breaks mixed in. But with help from my mom, the task was nearly complete. All that remained, following a shower, was to shovel snow that had been under my dad’s car at the edge of the driveway. That took ten minutes.

These pictures were taken at around 3PM, after that last bit of shoveling:

I usually shovel the sidewalk up to the property line, but there was so much snow that I didn’t bother.

Over the next few days, daytime high temperatures are forecast to be above freezing, perfect for melting. Good.

There are snow showers in the forecast for Thursday night into Friday with little accumulation expected. I hope that forecast stands.

I’ll leave you with the video timeline shot on my Panasonic HC-V770 and iPhone 6 (with an Otterbox Defender case):