The White Coast Published in New York Times: December 27, 2010

Call it the Boxing Day storm, the blizzard that slithered up the East Coast on the night after Christmas and into the next morning. Like other historic blizzards — 1978 and 1993 come to mind — this one carried a blunt message: stay indoors and stay put. Staying put was not hard to do on Monday. Nearly every mode of transportation in and around New York City, and much of the East Coast, had been suspended or was severely hampered. This was all the more troublesome because it caught so many holiday travelers in transit. What made the storm brutal wasn’t just the snow it dropped, from Alabama and Georgia all the way to Nova Scotia. It was also the wind the storm generated, swirling around an intense area of low pressure that crept north just offshore. Gusts off Cape Cod reached 80 miles per hour, and gusts of more than 60 m.p.h. were recorded in parts of New York, causing whiteout conditions on Monday morning and dangerous windchills on Monday night. For all the disruption and danger this blizzard brought, it was hard not to revel in the transformation it caused, waking to a white city, a day when nearly every human agenda was superseded by snow and even the best intentions were drifted over.

Now comes the hard part: digging out. In New York City, that means a countdown until your street is plowed, a test of city services that reaches into the remotest corner of every borough. The snow will turn gray, and swamps of slush will form at the curbs and corners. The tangle of travelers will come untangled, and it will be time to turn to the new year and see what storms and sunny, melting days early 2011 will bring.