On January 6, 1996, a massive winter storm descended on New York City and did not let up for 37 hours. By the time it was over, more than 20 inches of snow had buried the five boroughs. Winds hit 50 miles per hour, and in some spots, drifts piled up 8 feet high. The storm dropped snow at an average rate of 2 inches per hour — a pace that made it nearly impossible for the city to keep up. Streets that normally hummed with millions of people went silent. New York, one of the busiest cities in the world, was effectively shut down.
The storm formed when cold air collided with warmer air masses, creating a powerful system that swept up the East Coast. It didn’t just hit New York — the damage stretched from Washington, D.C., all the way to Boston. Across that region, total damages were estimated at one billion dollars. Casualties from Kentucky to Connecticut reached one hundred people. New York City felt the full force of the storm from the moment it arrived.
The heart of Midtown Manhattan was unrecognizable. 42nd Street, one of the city’s most iconic corridors, was buried under a thick blanket of white. The neon signs and storefronts that usually lit up the block were still glowing, but the crowds were gone. A few brave pedestrians picked their way through the drifts, but for the most part, the street belonged to the snow.
Schools closed immediately. Mail service ground to a halt. Food deliveries were delayed across the city. Residents were told to stay home and wait out the storm. Only police officers, firefighters, and hospital staff were expected to report to work. For most New Yorkers, the day was spent watching the snow pile up outside their windows.
The FDR Drive, which runs along the eastern edge of Manhattan beside the East River, was buried just like everywhere else. This stretch of highway normally carries thousands of vehicles each day, but during the storm it sat empty and frozen. The river itself was iced over in stretches, and the skyline beyond it was barely visible through the driving snow.
Downtown and in the neighborhoods, familiar intersections looked completely foreign. Parked cars disappeared under mounds of snow. Fire hydrants, trash cans, and mailboxes vanished. Sidewalks became indistinguishable from the street. People who did venture outside had to navigate by memory as much as by sight.
Times Square, normally packed with tourists and commuters at all hours, turned into a ghost town. The bright lights stayed on, but barely anyone was there to see them. A few pedestrians crossed the square with their heads down, pushing against the wind. Some photos from these hours show the square almost entirely empty — a sight that would have been unthinkable on any other day of the year.
The financial district near Wall Street was equally paralyzed. The narrow streets of Lower Manhattan, already prone to wind tunnels in normal weather, became brutal corridors of blowing snow. Anyone crossing those open plazas near the World Trade Center and the surrounding blocks faced gusts that made it hard to stand upright.
Despite the city’s orders to stay indoors, not everyone stayed put. Some New Yorkers had no choice but to go out. Others simply refused to let the storm stop them. Photos from the storm show a city that was paralyzed but not entirely lifeless. A woman walks alone down a blizzard-swept street. Children write messages in the snow piled on top of cars. A man in a snow-coated coat uses a pay phone on a sidewalk buried to his knees.
Taxis — the city’s most reliable form of transportation — sat buried and useless. The yellow cabs that normally filled every intersection were stuck under snowbanks, their rooftop lights barely visible above the drifts. Some cab drivers tried to push their vehicles free by hand. Buses still ran on some routes, but the lines at stops were long and the waits brutal. People huddled together in the snow, waiting.
Some New Yorkers found creative ways to get around. Cyclists with scarves wrapped around their faces rode down the middle of empty avenues. Others strapped on cross-country skis and glided along streets that would normally be impossible to cross on foot. On Riverside Drive and West End Avenue, skiers carved tracks through the snow as if they were in the middle of a mountain trail, not one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the country.
Outside Radio City Music Hall on Sixth Avenue, a woman looked up at the falling snow as she waited to cross the street. The image captures what so many New Yorkers experienced during those 37 hours — a city paused, mid-motion, looking up at something larger than itself. Workers at Times Square used shovels to try to clear the sidewalks, but the snow fell faster than they could remove it.
Central Park, which draws millions of visitors each year, transformed into a vast white wilderness. Pedestrians waded through the drifts across the Sheep Meadow, and cross-country skiers traced long lines through the open snow. The park, usually full of joggers and cyclists, felt remote and untouched. The only sounds were the wind and the crunch of boots breaking through the crust of snow.
Con Edison reported a power outage in the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn that knocked out electricity for 1,500 customers. Service was restored the following night. Grocery store shelves had already been stripped bare by the time the storm peaked — by evening, stores across the city were nearly empty, with long gaps where bread, milk, and canned goods had been. For many residents, the hours waiting out the storm meant getting by with whatever was already in the pantry.
When the snow finally stopped, the city faced an equally enormous task: digging out. Residents shoveled sidewalks and dug cars out from under two feet of packed snow. On 110th Street, parked cars were buried so deep under drifts that only their rooftops were visible. Children climbed 30-foot piles of snow that had been plowed up along sidewalks in Manhattan — mountains of white rising above the storefronts. On Riverside Drive, two people made their commute to work on skis.
The city’s homeless population faced the most dangerous conditions of anyone. New York opened 39 shelters and made 7,200 beds available. City workers worked to move people off the streets and into safety. But not everyone could be reached or persuaded to go inside. Ron Foster, a 56-year-old homeless man living on South Street in Manhattan, was photographed sweeping snow out of his makeshift shelter — a structure he’d built himself and refused to leave.
Moving the snow out of the city became a logistical operation on its own. The Department of Sanitation deployed dump trucks loaded with snow, hauling it to the East River and dumping it directly into the water beneath the Manhattan Bridge. Bulldozers worked the same job from the riverbanks, pushing massive loads of snow into the current. On the other side of the city, trucks also dumped snow into the frozen Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, which was dealing with its own enormous accumulation.
Airports, bus terminals, and highway rest stops were packed with stranded travelers. Thousands of people were caught mid-journey when the storm intensified and traffic stopped moving. The anxiety at those locations was intense — people who had no idea when they would be able to get home, or whether anyone would be coming to help them. The storm wasn’t just a local disruption. It paralyzed the entire region’s transportation network for days.
Once cleanup began, garbage collection became a serious problem. Sanitation trucks couldn’t reach many blocks because the streets were still impassable. Trash piled up along Columbus Avenue, 73rd Street, and dozens of other blocks across the city. The buildup of garbage on top of the snow added another layer of disorder to neighborhoods still trying to return to normal. Workers clearing Long Island Rail Road tracks at the Caemmerer Westside Storage Yard faced a different kind of challenge — keeping the rail system functional so the city could move again.
Not every image from the blizzard was grim. Two little girls shared one big umbrella on a walk through Central Park. A jogger ran through Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. A woman skied down 42nd Street as if the avenue were a mountain slope. On intersections throughout Manhattan, pedestrians walked down the center of roads that were normally impossible to cross on foot. The storm stripped the city of its usual pace and, for a brief stretch of hours, turned it into something else entirely.
Inside Beth Israel Hospital, a different kind of story was unfolding. Babies born during the blizzard arrived into a city locked under snow. Provie Monchek and others in the maternity ward marked the storm from a quieter vantage point — new life arriving even as the city outside was frozen still. For the parents of those children, January 6 and 7, 1996, would carry a very different meaning than it did for everyone else caught in the storm.
Whomever made the caption to this….. you wrote Blizzards of 1966 …. but have pics of 1996 LOL
It’s not an “electric” snow plow. It’s clearly a gas engine. Electric-anything didn’t exist in 1996, except, maybe a weed trimmer.
My brother and I had such a good time in the blizzard of ‘96. Remember that well.
That was the best fucken time of my life. Full week outta school. My sisters were away. Parents were both in healthcare so they had to work. My 13yo ass had the house almost entirely to myself most of that whole week. I sat around eating cereal, alternating Sega/SNES, and watching Disney movies all day.
Same omg. Stepped outside of our second floor (the ground floor door was snowed shut with drifts) and after a few steps…. I sunk.
Amazing. Days of fun.
Literally the best time of my life, there was 25 foot tall hill made entirely of snow two blocks down from where I lived and I’ll never forget the view from the top of it.
Winters of 93-94 and 95-96 were awesome. So much snow both winters. Hoping with the cold weather this month that we’ll get something at least this year
I remember in the 2010’s we would easily get multiple 12+ storms each winter. Now it’s been 5 years since we had anything more than a coating. I need my nyc storms back.
Wasn’t our last major storm / blizzard around 2013 or 2012? I remember walking home from work and sliding everywhere on the ice. It’s been so long that I can’t even remember the year. Wouldn’t be surprised if we got something this year though – it’s colder than it has been for a long time!
When I moved here 10 years back I was so psyched for the snow. My first year here there was 1 big storm when I was out of the country. Aside from that, it hasn’t really been any different than when I lived in Portland, Oregon. Maybe I need to move to Boston.
Wasn’t our last major storm / blizzard around 2013 or 2012? I remember walking home from work and sliding everywhere on the ice. It’s been so long that I can’t even remember the year. Wouldn’t be surprised if we got something this year though – it’s colder than it has been for a long time!
It was also a very dry summer, we were in and out of drought conditions. There is an odd equilibrium to the earth, the reservoirs might just fill up from a snowy winter.
There was a huge storm in 2016, I think we got 20+. Then 2018 and 2020 both had decent snow falls.
Yeah, January 2016 was a big one.
I remember de Blasio putting out a curfew the night it began. My homies and I just hung out in their apartment all day, drinking and whatnot.
But then the next morning after it finished, it was like 40 degrees and people actually did a good job of shoveling so it was easy to traverse. The week following was pretty warm so by the following weekend, there weren’t much signs of a blizzard left.
Climate change stole snow from NY
It was / is our consumption.
I do believe in climate change but it’s more likely that we’ve just had a string of drier weather patterns in our region. We’ve also had abnormally slow hurricane seasons recently, too.
This is anecdotal so grain of salt but I lived in NY when I was a kid, moved to FL at 18, and moved back to the same area a few years ago (seven or eight by now). I can’t say this as fact but for sure it feels different. When I was a kid, it wasn’t uncommon to have an inch or two snow as early as mid-October. From mid November into March, it wasn’t uncommon to have an almost constant ground-cover of at least an inch or two and there would be at least a few 12″ blizzards every year, sometimes a string of em back-to-back. In all my 18y growing up here, that I can recall, I think there was only one non-white Christmas. Also, the temperature crept into the fifties mid-December once that I recall and EVERYBODY was clucking about it like it was the fucking apocalypse.
Since moving back, I think I’ve only had one properly white Christmas. We don’t usually see any significant snow until the end of December or beginning of January. Snow-cover isn’t constant, rarely exceeds an inch, and 50f temps aren’t considered too unusual anymore it seems. Since moving back, I’ve seen only two 12″ blizzards that I can recall and they were back-to-back. This year has been much closer to what I would have called a normal winter when I was a kid but it’s still coming up short in terms of snowfall.
I’m aware that there has been less snow. I completely agree that there has been. But it may just be a couple slow years rather than a larger trend. Here is all the historical snowfall data for NYC. I can’t analyze it right now, but it seems like the annual numbers are all over the place since the 1800s.
https://www.weather.gov/media/okx/Climate/CentralPark/monthlyseasonalsnowfall.pdf
That was the blizzard when this girl in my grade was playing on top of a snowbank, fell off, and got hit by a bus. She was fine minus some broken bones but for the rest of our time in school together, people joked that she tried to throw herself in front of a bus and missed.
Hope you’re doing OK April and sorry kids are little shits!
Blizzard of 96 was the most snow I’ve ever seen in the NYC metro (was born in ‘84)
That was probably the most snow we had since the blizzard of 78! 96 shut the city down. I missed days of work in the city, happily. I lived in Astoria at the time & even still, Manhattan seemed too far away to navigate through the blizzard mounds.
I remember trying to get to school when it opened afterwards. Still sliding everywhere to cross streets!
I miss snow in NYC. Been years since we had real snow.
Yes. And what’s worse is snow happened to the north and south, as if NYC has some shield that blocks snow off
It does in a way, it’s called an urban heat island.
Not always, there were a few times when snows fell in DC. That was because NYC was too cold and the cold air pushed the snow line further south
I think PBS was showing a long documentary series (pre-Ken Burns) about and called The History of Rock n’ Roll. I was a freshman in college and had old friends visiting from out of town and we stayed inside and watched the entire thing.
Miss our 2016 blizzard ❄️
Pretty sure those slogans on the movie theater marquees in the Times Square photos are Jenny Holzer’s work.
Yes! Part of her Survival Series. So cool
I really should buy one of her books.
I was there, I seent it. School let us out early and the snow was already up to our knees.
Thanks, I was going to ask. Were there no movies at that time?
I think what probably happened was that Holzer’s pieces were “commissioned” (paid for) to be displayed on a specific number of marquees (i.e., in the Times Square area—high visibility), obviously for a price. So the theaters—maybe some of them were “adult theaters”?—got far more kick back (i.e., rental fees) on just their marquees’ display space for, say, a week or two (what ever the [artistic] exhibition “run” was for her installation[s]) than if they were just being used to advertise whatever XXX movies they were running. I.e., inside the theaters, movies were still being shown; it was just the marquees were “repurposed” for something else.
I was living in Times Square during the blizzard it was so cool walking up Broadway, it was so strangely peaceful and beautiful.
I was working in TV production in the winter of ‘96, and as the lowest level employee (office PA), I was stuck having to try and go to work the day the storm hit so as to prove it wasn’t possible for anyone to go in and the show could get insurance to pay for any lost days.
It usually took me 30 minutes at 6:00 am to get door to door via the train from the UWS to open the production office in Chelsea, but on that day there were few trains, even fewer taxis, and when I finally got down there two hours later, the doors to the old factory where the show was shot were locked. The one guard who was there was pissed because his relief was running way late. It took me almost three hours to get back to my apartment, where I called the unit production manager and she took it from there.
We had 2 days of no shooting, and the day everyone went back, it was a madhouse because we were behind schedule, and we couldn’t use the weekend to catch up. SAG wasn’t about to let the production have actors working 7 days straight, blizzard or no blizzard.
A girl can dream, can’t she.
I want snow.
Was at the office on this day. Our boss invited us back to his place for drinks and dinner. His wife wasn’t pleased and I immediately recognized how much more my boss was making when I saw the apt.
My dad took me sledding on the street I remember it well
During the blizzard, sanitation pushed all the snow on the block into the dead end. As a kid, it felt like that mountain of snow was 100 feet tall, although it was probably closer to 20. All the kids on the block spent the week playing king of the hill on it, fighting to stay at the top as long as we could before somebody else would knock us off of it. I don’t think any of us had an inch of skin without a bruise on it. It was amazing.
Are we all just going to ignore the weird marquee signs? also I remember this blizzard well. It shut down the tristate area for the better part of a week.
Got frostbite as a toddler, 9/10 would do again because that snow was AWESOME.
It’s the only time I remember ever getting off for weather from nyc public school
Some of the best snow mounds I’ve ever climbed
We had to drive down from Hunter Mountain in that because none of us could get the day off. Good times
I remember the start of the blizzard so well because we went to the Fangoria convention, and we met Lucio Fulci. I also took the coolest picture of Udo Kier, which I really should find again and digitize. Yes, big snow and 14th street shut down entirely
I was in Maryland at that time. I remember that week of no school vividly. And I remember the day the snow plows finally came. It was sad times.
4 day weekend…me with my SNES playing Chrono Trigger and Yoshi’s Island
Yup. Photos of me and my brother climbing on massive snow piles. Simpler times ❤️
Good times . I was only 5! Snow up to my waist
96 Blizzy is a classic
For driving semi in the city that was the worst I can remember
I remembered that well. Came home from hanging out and shoveled the driveway. The next morning I was shocked at the amount of snow that felt
Nooo 🫨. My first snow experience in this country and I wouldn’t recommend this weather now , but my Caribbean gecko 🦎 senses tell me we might experience this next year.
skiing down 5th avenue, helping cabs get unstuck, sledding in Brooklyn, and especially how everything was a bit quieter, what an amazing storm.
What’s with those creepy sings on the marquees??
We had so many snow days
Almost thirty years ago. Yikes.
Oh man I remember this as a child, I made an Igloo on 72nd st btw Park and Madison!
I was 10. I grew up on the Upper West Side. I remember walking south on Broadway – on the street! – with my dad and little sister. It felt magical.
This caused everyone in my CT town to go out and buy an SUV
Yeah I remember that year I’m from Pennsylvania an hour away from New York City we got a lot of snow that year
What’s going on with those marquee’s?? Some depressing ass messaging there!
I lived in NJ when this happened and we lost a week of school and my town had a teacher’s strike that same year so unfortunately enjoying the time off then meant going to school until basically the end of June. As a kid I hated going to school in the summer but I liked having unexpected time off.
Ice is covering the trees, and some of its interconnecting, with my Chevrolet Caprice
As a Canadian from Manitoba, this is how much snow we had last week when it snowed for 2 days straight! Lucky me didn’t miss a single minute of work!
Mate, because of climate change I haven’t seen a proper snow for few years now, maybe a decade. Cherish that snow my friend, you have no idea how weird and unnatural (for me) winter without snow is. And Christmas ? Pffff at least I will see my family, otherwise I could understand why this time of the year feels so bad for many.
It’s December 19th here in rural BC and it’s raining right now…
Oil Companies have actually stolen Christmas
I was catching a flight at JFK. Our connecting flight to JFK landed 8 hours late, hit another plane during the last seconds of parking. We ended up waiting inside the plane for another hour. The funny thing is: the plane for the 2nd leg was also delayed by so much that I actually made it
Remember it well. What distinguished that storm were the drifts. In spots it looked like we got 4-6 feet
So. Much. Snow. The snow and ice was piled so high in the Susquehanna river that a bridge in Harrisburg was destroyed as it moved down stream.
I was 10 years old in mid-Michigan for this storm. We got about a foot. My sister and I made the evening news while out shoveling snow.
My mom likes to regale that story as if it were some fun quirky thing that we did as kids, instead of being told to shovel the sidewalks in the middle of a blizzard “or I’ll beat your ass”, and despite or protests that they’ll just be covered again in half an hour.
How cool is that! I was there for the first time in NYC (1 of 2 currently) but I had no pictures from that trip. Thanks!!
Ah, yes, the year I moved to RI because I wanted to get away from the Alaskan winters….🤦
I was born during this blizzard, on the east coast, and I’ve heard about it my whole life but never saw pictures of it.
The snow piles on the corners from the trucks . And climbing those as a kid was fun.
The blizzard of 96 was my first ever experience with snow, and it was glorious!
Happened to be in Rhode Island for that one. Might have been worse there.
I had to help shovel off our roof because it started to creak and we were afraid it might collapse. Fucking back breaking work in freezing weather.
Looking out the window, and this, times two, is what I see. Although in Norway. Cool pictures!
I was a freshman in high school. Our Xmas break was extended another week or two. It was amazing. Although there were plenty, this was the most memorable snow storm of my childhood. Thank you for this post!
I was 15 loving in queens. There were mountains of snow. My friends were jumping off their second story balcony into several feet of powder snow. The entire street looked magical the first time we stepped out. This post definitely unlocked some memories.
So many cool pics, blizzards are so rare today
I remember this fucking day. I was applying for a specialized art school in Manhattan and my dad was 3 hours to pick me up. No cellphone so no way to contact! I think the trains might have been shut down otherwise I would have taken it back home. I was 14
Blizzard Larry in 1978 was pretty wild in NE Connecticut. I recall 30 inches of snow with drifts many feet tall. Good times.
Those movie tags in photos are crazy. Anyone know what was in theatres?
One of the only years I can remember where my dad shoveled snow off our roof a few times.
Remember 6′ of snow on top of the back retaining wall.
Fuck I miss good winters. Was such a big part of my childhood. Staying out late sledding. Sitting in the snow until it soaks through to your pants, not wanting to move because you’ve been dragging your GT uphill all day sledding.
Almost Christmas and it’s 8° out. Bullshit.
Yeah I was in the Philly burbs and we got socked with snow!
Laughs in Buffalo
What was going on with the … weird … sayings on the theater marquees in Times Square?
Artworks by Jenny Holzer.
Thanks
What was going on with the … weird … sayings on the theater marquees in Times Square?
I was a teenager living in the Pocono mountains of NE PA during this blizzard. 4+ feet of snow. We dug bobsledding tracks and tunnels on the nearby hill. Great times.
I remember this blizzard. It’s one of those really early childhood memories. I played out in the snow with friends. Don’t think I’ve seen any snow on that level since.
Article says cold air from Mexico and hot air from Canada???
Ah yes…shoveling my mom’s car out from 3 feet of snow was a blast. /s
On the other hand, we had a lot of fun that winter, and a couple years earlier (no one remembers “ice storm of ’94”), building snowmen in inappropriate places, doing donuts on the highway, getting baked and throwing snowballs at cars, and trucks, bumper riding all over town, wandering the streets, drinking stolen Zima, etc.
I was 20 and travelling from Manchester to study in Chicago. I flew into this and got stuck in JFK for two days waiting for a connecting flight. I enjoyed every second of it, a real adventure. I wouldn’t fancy it now.
Similar experience- as a UK student in NJ – this stuff was crazy to me. I remember the snow being piled high on the sidewalks creating little tunnels – remember it snowing pretty much every week from November to early April!!! Damn it was cold too…
Yeah, it was mind blowingly different to the north west of England for me! So glad I got to it experience all. Seems like it happened to a different person now I’m pushing 50.
It’s really weird to remember NYC as cold in the winters. I’m not even very far in my lifetime and I already remember how winters were very often snowy — as opposed to now where maybe you get a day of dusting, maybe you get mostly 50 degree days.
NYC in even the last 20 years is a very apparent demonstration of global warming.
Its already gotten cold here a few times, and we cant even legally say its winter yet. We havent had a crazy blizzard for 6 or 7 years, but it still gets cold here. Last major snow storm I recall was in 2017. They closed all above ground train stations.
Im not denying global warming, just saying that it absolutely gets cold here still.
Yea I’m in the Poconos, and it hasn’t been super bad in awhile. It still gets pretty fucking cold.
We got a few back to back storms in 2021 that left 2-3 feet of snow.
I remember making snow angels with my wife (who was my girlfriend at the time) on the FDR Drive. The whole thing was shut down. I also remember seeing people skiing down 3rd Ave on the Upper East Side. It was wild. I was born and raised in NYC and don’t recall one being that bad. I seem to remember a pretty bad one in the early 80’s that closed the schools, but that’s about it.
I’m from Long Island, and this was THE blizzard of my childhood, I’ve never forgotten it. It was so magical to me-I remember carving out an igloo from the feet of snow my dad had shoveled to the side of our driveway.
From north Jersey and same here. Was 7 years old, my friends and I built a multi-room igloo in the pile of snow that was left after my dad shoveled the driveway.
I was 9, also on LI and I can’t recall this one. Not sure why.
I got snowed in at my boyfriends apartment on LI . My boss sent an email that people still worked during snowstorms….and my mother freaked out and expected me to drive home – to Westchester County! Nope, roads were closed. Barely made it home when I finally left.,
I was 10 when this happened and living in the Bronx. I remember we also made igloos in the park. The snow was almost like ice, you could pick it up perfectly in large chunks. By the afternoon there were several more igloos. I can’t see that happening these days, everyone would just stay inside on their devices.
17 year-old me love this what a memory…. I really wish my kids could experience something like this. It was magical the sheer amount of snow.
Why does that theater have messages in stead of movie names on it’s boards?
I’m pretty sure the texts are by the artist Jenny Holzer.
Was this in reference to a show?
No: that was her artwork. The movie marquees were a temporary thing — Times Square, as I recall — but all her work is text-based.
This was the last year NYC dumped excess snow into the rivers. Environmental concerns. There was more than just snow being emptied into the waterways. Now they dump the snow in large areas and have snow melters that empty into specific sewer drains.
The trash piling up was worse than pictured. NYC Dept of Sanitation cant do both jobs at once. Until roadways are drivable, no collection pickups.
I remember the blizzard in Virginia. First and last time I’ve been able to build an igloo. So much fun for a high schooler, probably not as much for an adult
We were in Falls Church, and walked like 5 miles up to Giant, because it was open. We towed a sled to put the groceries on. We cooked in the fireplace and camped out together in the family room. Giant snow forts, hot dogs on the fire, no school. It was pretty freaking cool actually.
I grew up in the DMV. We, too, built our first and last igloo, and it took WEEKS to melt. I was literally telling the story this week. Good times.
At the time, I had a motorcycle which I parked on the street. I didn’t see it for months.
No way it still worked after that long, right? Surely rusted out?
Nah, no worse than any car would. It was an old KZ650, and pretty much bulletproof. And it had a tarp over it.
Snow is better than rain, anyway — it doesn’t really cause rust, at least until it starts to melt. Anyway, it always took a little resuscitating in the spring, snow or not — like any bike would after sitting for a while. A jump start or a new battery, some air in the tires, maybe spark plugs. Basic maintenance.
The bigger problem would be salt from the city salting the roads to melt the ice, but that didn’t reach under the pile of snow the bike was buried in.
People in northern climates have vehicles and other toys buried in snow, in their back yard for entire winters, many entire winters.
I remember this like it was yesterday, but when I look at these pictures, it makes it look like it was the 70’s.
Right? I was a senior in high school, and I think of it almost as a recent event, but it looks like a bygone era in these pictures.
Welp, time to bust out the yearbook and admire my full head of hair.
We’re basically twice as far away from the 96 blizzard (~29 years, it was early 1996) as that blizzard was from the 70s (~16 years), so…
Yeah, I hate that too hah.
The era of the analog world all feels very similar compared to today
All of this would have been photographed on film so that definitely contributes to older look.
Such a memorable storm. I was at American Trash on the Upper East Side that night. A bunch of us drunks went outside and started an impromptu football game in the middle of a snowy 1st Avenue. We were using one of those Nerf footballs that whistles as it flies and on high throws, you’d lose sight of the ball in the streetlights and had to figure out where it was coming down by the sound.
Sometimes I miss the snow.
Sometimes I miss American Trash!!
Was home from school playing my copy of Mortal Kombat 3 (Sega Genesis) that I’d been gifted days before for my birthday. Pure 9 year old bliss.
I don’t remember what I was doing but I also would have been home from school. Probably also playing MK or Nintendo, watching Price is Right or Supermarket Sweep, David the Knome. Maybe doing chores if I was at my mom’s because on snow days she would use that as an opportunity to give us stuff to do before she came home from work.
NYC was awesome in the snow. I had a blizzard baby born in September, 1996. Yay!
What an epic blizzard. My buddies on I grabbed our snowboards and got pulled around the city with a rope attached to a jeep.
I genuinely feel bad that future children will never experience snow days where they take off from school and play in the park. With remote learning that shit will never fly.
I remember my dad walking me at night several blocks to my friend’s house for a sleepover during the storm, and the snow was up to my thighs in a lot of places because of the drifts. I stayed over her house for two nights and we had a blast. We made faux igloos and would jump from the swing straight into the snow piles. When I came back home, all of the neighbors were congregating together at one end of the block, attempting to shovel out the entrance to the street so they could get out. I guess that the plows were overwhelmed and wouldn’t get to our residential street any time soon. One of the most bizarrely “we’re in this together!” moments ever for all of the neighbors on my block in Flushing. Many happy memories from that storm.
Was one of three days I was able to walk down the center of Fifth Avenue with absolutely no risk of being hit by a car.
OK what’s the deal with all the odd slogans on the Times Square marquees
1996-97 is when the adult industry in Times Square started to get geographically banished through new city zoning laws. Afterward when Times Square was on-its-surface PG-13 the Broadway Theaters and regular Movie Theaters came back 1997-98.
OK thanks… but where did the slogans come from? Was it an art installation?
Kinda looks like the 2010-ish snowfall. 5 ft of snow if I remember correctly
I have pictures of my little brother when he was 6 and the show was taller than he was.
A mta bus even cop stuck on our block and only if our neighbors closer to the bus had to let him user their bathroom and get warm.
Yeap, I remember the stalled MTA busses. Then the city went around with the snow plowers and covered cars so high that they were stuck for up to a month.
This was a core memory for me as a kid. Was one of the first things I can clearly remember.
Same. I vividly recall making my way to the upper west side from mid-town as a little kid so we could shelter with friends. My mom had to carry my little brother because he was literally unable to walk in the snow and I just walked up and over numerous cabs and cars because the sidewalks were packed and the snow drifts were so huge. Snowball fights for days. And then we made igloos in those psychotic snow banks. I’ll never forget it, I hope kids nowadays get to experience real snow days in the city.
Good times. Miss you ‘96
I made 40 bucks that day, big money for a HS sophomore
Oh jeez. A week or two previously I was down in Florida while NYC got dumped with 7-8 inches of snow. “Boy, am I glad I’m not there for that!” I thought to myself. Then we got the blizzard. 😵💫
Woah these are special. Thanks for sharing
My dad was FDNY at the time, and he was on the news the day after this blizzard. They had gone out and helped a woman give birth in an ambulance that had gotten stuck in the snow.
I remember we tried to record him on the news with a camcorder because we didn’t own a VCR.
Which news channel? I think I remember something about that on channel 5.
You may be able to find it still, might be archived.
I was 24. I find it funny how many comments are from “kids”.
Let me tell you how this was an an (young) adult. I was in Hoboken. The storm started in Saturday and through Sunday. My shift on Monday started at 6am, so at 5am I was walking down the middle of Washington Street because most of the sidewalks were simply covered in snow drifts, and took the PATH (unaffected by snow) into the city to the subway (also unaffected by snow).
I get into work in midtown right on time. I work/ed for a very well known IT company. Anyhoo, I was there at my desk right on time. You know who wasn’t at their desks?!
EVERYONE ELSE!!
So, i’m alone on a customer service desk for IT. Answering phone calls from lots of people who use our service that isn’t working – and they don’t care that it is snowing in NYC. They want their service to work. Calls are in our queue and i’m the only idiot who was dumb enough to go into work, rather than doing what everyone else did – stay home. A few people did trickle in as the day progressed but on a desk that had like 15-20 customer service reps we had like 5-8 people. Lots of people lived in Long Island or in NJ & took buses into work – and they were snowed in at the suburbs. Plus, some are parents and with their kids not going into school on Monday couldn’t be like “see ya!” and go into work while their kids stayed home.
I’m working and getting my tail kicked into the dirt. Remember there’s no cell phones then or much of anything. We did have rudimentary internet boards and i’m getting updates from friends about how much fun they are having – young adults staying home from work going to bars at noon, and getting drunk. Oh, they are having lots of fun. Hoboken was one big frickin’ snow block party. Meanwhile i’m at work.
My shift ends at 3. But – wouldn’t you know it – the company is like that dude from the movie “Office Space” with a “Yeah, uh, could you like, uh, not go home at 3pm? I need you to like, uh, work a bit later until 5pm?”
I’m new and i’m 24 and want to show our somewhat famous IT employer that i’m a good company guy so of course i’m like “Okay i’ll work overtime.” – also we don’t get overtime, i’m a salary employee making like $45,000 a year at that time. So I get a basic pat on the back from the managers.
I get home via train and see lots of young people in bars having a grand old time.
Yeah, so it sucks being an adult sometimes.
I was baptized in Staten Island as this was going on
That whole winter was insane, but yeah, I remember this as a 10 year old. First time the schools closed in…like 15 years? Then we randomly had a day or two of 65-70 degree weather with piles of snow all around.
Lots of babies born 9 months later lol.
I remember another blizzard a year or two before this one. It was so heavy, that parked cars looked like little hills, and we were able to climb them.
I feel NYC no longer gets snow because there is essentially a dome over the region caused by the density and the activity that goes with it that causes a warming effect and we get rain instead
It doesn’t get snow anymore because, because it doesn’t snow anymore.
My point still stands. Snow and rain are both precipitation. A 40 minute drive North or West of the city and you will see snow
Damn these were the Sega Genesis days and staying home from school was amazing!
What is that white stuff all over the place? I have a vague memory of seeing that before in NYC
I remember not being able to open my front door and a giant snow wall when we did we had to dig from the steps to the front gate
I played tackle football in Columbus Park. Still remember how much fun that day was.
The wildest, honestly dumbest thing I ever did in NY was walk from the Grand Concourse and Mt Eden all the way to 187th and Bennett, going down the ramp to the Cross Bronx because it was more direct, just to see my cousins. Trains were down, no other way. Wasn’t scared of traffic because I knew everyone would be driving slow.
What’s with the marquees written on the Liberty theater in all those photos? Were they related to a movie playing at the time, or a political statement? They’re very ominous and sadly seemingly always relevant to humanity.
Because the mayor forced them to close and they were abandoned at that point.
This is a similar but different https://thomlang.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/haiku-on-42nd-street/
I was in 8th grade at IS77 and I remember we had what felt like the first snow day of our lives. The next day we trekked the usual 15 minute walk to school with bags and boots on our feet (it took us almost an hour) and had an entire day of gym because only a handful of students showed up.
Times Square still had a certain type of theatre in 1996! What made that storm so memorable was not just the snow, but the temps It was in the teens most of the storm and so windy!
Picture #86 is from Philadelphia showing dump trucks unloading snow into the Schuylkill River at 30th and Market Streets.
They had to stop after awhile because the snow pile got big enough to be higher than the bridge deck.
I vaguely remember this storm. I remember no school and just a lot of fun. There was another storm a couple years later (unless it’s this one but I could have swore it was 99) where the sidewalk was like a tunnel to a kid and we were climbing on the “wall” of snow on the edge and walking on that
My brothers and I shoveled all the snow to one side of the yard and built a giant cave, ran electricity into it so we had light and music. Spent the better part of the week in that thing.
I remember 1993 being worse. The water main in my area broke and we were shoveling snow into bathtubs so we could use it to flush toilets. Good times.
My neighbors and I built an igloo during that blizzard, I wish I could find the pictures my mom took of us. It was pretty big, it could fit ~6 elementary school aged children.
I still remember this, it was amazing! I jumped in to my first giant snow pile after this storm, like I always saw in cartoons.
This was awesome. School was closed for a few days and me and my friends just had snowball fights all day long.
I was stuck in Staten Island for 3days because of this damn storm!
I’ll never forget this storm, I grew up in Rockland County, so just outside of NYC. After the 3rd snow day, they decided to cancel school for the rest of the week. 13 y/o me played outside in the snow every day for that whole week.
My friends and I would play in the snow until we were wet and cold. Then we’d come inside, throw our snow clothes in the dryer and eat some food, then do it all over again. Core memories for sure!
I’ll never forget this storm, I grew up in Rockland County, so just outside of NYC. After the 3rd snow day, they decided to cancel school for the rest of the week. 13 y/o me played outside in the snow every day for that whole week.
My friends and I would play in the snow until we were wet and cold. Then we’d come inside, throw our snow clothes in the dryer and eat some food, then do it all over again. Core memories for sure!