January 25 winter storm, January 26-28 aftermath January 29, 2026

Posted by Mike C. in Media, Personal, Photography, Video, Weather.
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One week after an inconsequential weather event left 2 inches of snow with only half of that accumulating on pavement, a more significant storm impacted not Long Island, but most of North America. You can read the full details in the Wikipedia entry. Long story short, and I’ll repeat this later, about 11.2 inches of snow (topped off with sleet) accumulated at my Wantagh home between the early mornings of January 25 and 26.

Now for a series of photographic timelines with written wraparounds, and even a video.

Sunday, January 25

Minutes later, my dad Bill decided to get an early start on snow blowing. The photos below were taken between 4:21 and 4:55 PM.

I took two more indistinguishable sleet photos before calling it a night and going to bed.

Snow was reportedly still mixing in with the sleet, but I couldn’t tell. Either way, I wore earplugs to bed to drown out the sleet pelting my east-facing window. All the photos you’ve seen so far are from my south-facing window. At one point when my dad noticed that window was closed, he intentionally aimed the snow blower chute in that direction, sending a blast of snow my way. As he later told me, he wouldn’t have done that if he saw me camera in hand with the window open.

Monday, January 26

When I looked outside for the first time after sunrise, I noticed remnant flurries falling. This set of photos was taken between 7:32 and 7:38 AM. The location of the photos is noted in the captions.

Less than an hour later, I prepped to go outside and shovel. Once I was properly dressed at 8:33 AM, I measured the snow and sleet with an 18-inch ruler from an untouched spot on the front lawn, and took a before photo on the front porch.

In a 48-minute span, not counting when I paused my watch’s stopwatch feature, I could only clear the front porch, porch steps, pathway between the porch and driveway, the edge of the driveway by the garage door, and a path to the oil tank fuel cap on the left side of the house.

I was physically drained. Not only did I have to shovel, but scraping and chiseling were also involved thanks to the sleet mixture. The left side of the house was the easiest (least difficult) to shovel because it was untouched.

It was up to my parents Bill and Lisa to clear their cars. The residual snow blowing would wait until sunset.

Next photographic timeline:

The snow blower made its encore appearance at 5:02 PM. The photos below were taken through 5:20.

Then, a two-minute video conclusion:

Once my dad put the snow blower back in the garage, I went outside to photograph the aftermath. The time frame was between 5:26 and 5:29 PM.

Tuesday, January 27

I volunteered to follow-up on Dad’s snow blower work by completely clearing as snow as I could that remained on the driveway and sidewalk. Phase 1 occurred last Tuesday afternoon. Without my Canon EOS R7 on hand, I used my iPhone 17 Pro for aftermath photos at 4:08 PM.

Wednesday, January 28

I was somehow able to get a decent night’s sleep with the prospect of finishing what I started on Wednesday morning. After breakfast, I did just that. The final photos of this recap were taken upon completion at 8:05 AM.

That was as much as I could shovel away ahead of whatever comes next. As of publication, another storm is possible Saturday night into Sunday (January 31 into February 1) and would only be snow. If you don’t see a blog post, it missed us.