West Side Canvas: Snow Day

Painting and Essay by Robert Beck

We finally got our snow. The forecasters told us we were going to get hammered before the storm was barely up and running out west, and they kept the drumbeat going for the week before it arrived. A big blob of cold air split from the Arctic Mass and was sliding down Canada into the United States, where it was going to hit a blob of warm, wet air moving across the South. That meant a lot of snow, or rain, or ice, depending on where you were.

Forecasting is a business, which means engaging people early and often. Calling the weather is like commentating sports. Everybody has a pre-season prediction, mid-season prediction, surprise break-out storm system, and updates, but nobody really knows the score until it’s over.

Back when I was a kid, we had two, maybe three days’ notice that the weather was going to get bad.  The extra four or five days of anxiety we get now doesn’t seem to help much, except when it comes to managing flight reservations.  It puts you on notice and gives you something to worry about, like we don’t have enough.

There are plenty of places to get your predictions, from the official news (careful, don’t get too close), to Facebook, Yaniva at the checkout register, Marv walking his yappy little dog on 94th, and that Uber driver with all the tattoos. Everybody has their own model. Just 12 hours before the snow began, the spread in the Times was 6-18 inches, which tells you nothing. I’m a country boy; I watch the squirrels. When they start collecting insulated take-out containers, I know we’re in for a doozy.

At the height of the storm, New Yorkers turned out for their Winter Wonderland. It was still inhospitable, but they seized the moment and brought the little ones to experience the delights. They carried tubes, disks, and pieces of cardboard: all the tools to make memories on some hill in the park.

This was not an Aspen crowd. This was UWS couture: overcoats, knit hats, sneakers, and take-out coffee. One couple had a stroller that didn’t roll in the deep snow, so they put it on a plastic sled and pulled it. It wasn’t a sliding snow, but that wasn’t going to stop them. There was no way to cross the street without negotiating dense mounds. People carried their dogs, sometimes one under each arm. It was still cold and blowing. Every step was a big one. Folks tired quickly.

The temperature rose to about 20° by 4:30, the sky turned a darker gray, and the streetlights came on. Men and women trudged out of the park, heading home or to a hot meal, some dragging sleds with exhausted kids on them. Cars were still getting stuck in the snow. By 6 o’clock, it was dark, and there were very few vehicles. The buses were back in charge of the streets. The wind kicked up. There was a pause in the precipitation, but the forecasters promised sleet and freezing rain until morning, a Monday. How much for how long would determine what a mess it would be when most of us had to get somewhere. As always, we’d know when it happened.

See more of Robert Beck’s work and visit his UWS studio at www.robertbeck.net. Let him know if you have a connection to an archetypical UWS place or event that would make a good West Side Canvas subject. Thank you!

Listen to an interview with Robert Beck on Rag Radio — Here.

Note: Before Robert Beck started West Side Canvas, his essays and paintings were featured in Weekend Column. See Robert Beck’s earlier columns here and here.

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