Photo of the Day: Last (Major) Snowfall of Winter 2015?

Yes, you see hope in that headline, but also qualifiers, questioning and even pessimism about what may lie in store before the supposed start of spring in two weeks.

And who can blame me? This past Wednesday, the local newscast featured not just the European and American models that became so famous in the Blizzard-of-Historic-Dimensions-That-Wasn’t in 2015, but yet a third model. The upshot, we were told, is that we could get anywhere from two to eight inches outside New York.

As you can see from this shot taken when it was all over, from the front lawn of my house, it turned out to be closer to eight inches. And this is going to make getting in and out of my driveway difficult for the next several days, at least.

My street, in Englewood, NJ, has a parking situation akin to Manhattan—i.e., cars are lucky to find an inch of space between them. What this means, on any normal day, is that I can’t simply reverse straight back out of the driveway, but have to angle the car out, lest I back into a vehicle directly behind me.

And this street is anything but normal in the aftermath of a snowfall. There’s not only all the residual snow left over on the street, now icy from being packed down by multiple vehicles going up the streets before the plows go through, but, once that happens, snowbanks of unusual rigidity and height. The danger grows exponentially of hitting one of those snowbanks, or of not being able to see over them when a car comes madly dashing down the street, ice and snow be damned. Neither outcome is something to anticipate with glee.