A Record! Blizzard '06 Officially Biggest (in NYC)

AP via WCBSTV.com ^ | 2/12/06 | AP

[conservative in nyc]

A record storm blanketed the city in 2 feet of snow on Sunday, stranding tens of thousands of air travelers and sending sanitation workers into overdrive to try to get the streets passable by Monday.

By 1 p.m., the National Weather Service reported that 26.9 inches of snow had fallen in Central Park, the highest tally since records started being kept in 1869. The record was 26.4 inches in December 1947. The snow is measured by the official Central Park measurer for the National Weather Service.

The storm caught some New Yorkers by surprise, coming on the heels of an unusually mild January.

"It's sort of crazy because it was so warm a couple of weeks ago and now we have knee-deep snow," said Skye Drynan, walking her dogs Bella and Forest in lower Manhattan early Sunday.

With visibility at less than a quarter mile, Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged New Yorkers to stay off the roads.

"This is a dangerous storm," Bloomberg said. "Don't drive unless you have to."

The mayor, speaking at a salt storage facility on the Hudson River, said that with 2,200 snow plows and 350 salt spreaders working, he hoped to have all the city's 6,300 miles of streets cleared by Monday's rush hour.

Bloomberg said 2,500 Department of Sanitation employees were working in 12-hour shifts, with vacations and days off canceled, and temporary workers were being hired at $10 an hour to shovel snow.

The storm closed all three of the region's major airports, and airlines canceled more than 500 inbound and departing flights -- 200 each at La Guardia and Newark airports and 120 at Kennedy. The Port Authority said Kennedy could be open by 5:30 p.m., but La Guardia will not open until at least 6 a.m.

[SoCal Pubbie]

"90 degrees...yuck, that sounds awful. "

Yes, it's truly horrible, but somehow we'll struggle though.

[Minuteman23]

Awesome house, Joanie.