Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

New York City hit with record blizzard
By Josh Hirschland
Columbia Daily Spectator (Columbia U.)
02/13/2006

(U-WIRE) NEW YORK — During what has been an unseasonably warm winter, Mother Nature dumped almost 27 inches of fresh powder over Manhattan this weekend, the largest single snowfall in 137 years of recorded New York City history, according to the National Weather Service. According to the University Web site, Columbia will be open today on a normal schedule.

On the steps of Low Library, students and neighborhood children played in the snow, sledding down in makeshift sleds of dining trays and storage-container tops. Early last night, some had erected a ski jump. One group of first-years, headed by Key Nguyen, CC '09, built an "igloo for the homeless" in front of Alma Mater.

Elsewhere on campus, more than 60 students engaged in at least five snow football games on South Lawn throughout the day, despite the presence of a red flag. "We've been out here for a few hours-normally we get kicked off after a few minutes," Jarod Were, SEAS '07, said after three hours of football. "It seemed like they kind of gave up because there were ... [so many] people there."

Not everybody was so overjoyed. "When I was young, I loved it. Now I hate it," said Robert Paris, a University maintenance worker who began plowing at 6 a.m. After his 10-hour shift, he spent another hour and a half digging out his Nissan, which was buried under a foot and a half of snow on Broadway at 112th.

Throughout the area yesterday, people of all ages took the day to frolic in the snow. The Department of Parks and Recreation set up a Snow Day community sled hill in Riverside park. "It's probably the biggest crowd I've seen out here in the three years that we've been out at this specific location," Chris Clouden, chief of recreation for Manhattan, said of the group, which downed more than 350 cups of hot chocolate during the two-hour event.

"It's fun," Clouden said. "It can be a long day when it's cold, but it's usually an entertaining day. You get to see the kids and talk to some of the people who give you positive feedback."

"It's a madhouse," 12-year-old Danny Ben-David, who went sledding in the park, said. "There are all of these teenagers trying to kill each other."

Just atop the hill, a trio of 12-year-olds sold more than 30 "energy slushees" for 75 cents each. "We looked around the park for the freshest and best-tasting snow we could find and we used Gatorade and mixed them," Jesse Levine-Spound said.

The intrepid entrepreneurs may have found a client in Linnea McWilliam, a 3-year-old Morningside resident. "I ate the snow from the window," she said about her day. "Yum!"

Across the city, the storm resulted in the cancellation of more than 800 flights at the three major airports, shut down part of the George Washington Bridge, and gave rise to a world-record-breaking attempt at the world's largest snowball fight in Prospect Park.

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