On a normal day in Providence, R.I., towing an abandoned car off a city street would be a routine task — a mere footnote on the municipal agenda.
But on the day after a record-breaking blizzard dumped three feet of snow on the densely populated city of 195,000, towing had become a high-stakes ordeal, requiring logistical gymnastics, police drone surveillance and the attention of the mayor to overcome a maze of impassable streets and buried tow yards.
“What is normally simple is now complicated,” Mayor Brett Smiley said by phone as he toured the snow-socked city in a police S.U.V. on Tuesday morning. “Everything takes more time. Everything has an added layer of logistics.”
Residents of Providence, like those in other parts of New England and New York that were hit hard by the storm, awoke on Tuesday to a scene of powdery beauty, the snow sparkling under crystalline blue skies. Some were able to hold onto the magic. Others were tested by barely surmountable obstacles as they attempted to rejoin reality.
Students at Brown University clipped on skis and gleefully crafted snow sculptures, including one depicting the university’s bear mascot. “It felt like we were in ‘Frozen’” during the storm on Monday, said Alexa Theodoropoulos, 20, a student from the Philippines who added that she had never seen so much snow.
In a driveway not far away, Anthony Sisti and Gisella Silva, both 28, faced off against the mountain of snow that had claimed their cars.
After 30 minutes of shoveling, bumper-high piles still blocked their way, with little open space to put more snow.
“We’re nowhere close,” Ms. Silva said. “We’re just creating a bigger pile.”
The storm swept into the region on Sunday night, fueled by a colossal drop in air pressure. En route to Boston, it “pivoted and locked itself across Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts,” said Kevin Cadima, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boston.
The intensity of the snowfall felt almost surreal: Two to three inches of snow fell every hour, for 12 hours on end, in central and southern Rhode Island. In Warwick, a few miles south of Providence, T.F. Green International Airport recorded a two-day storm total of 37.9 inches, shattering the two-day record of 28.6 inches set during the Blizzard of 1978. Providence got slightly less, Mr. Cadima said.
“It’s really impressive,” he said. “To get that for 12 straight hours is something you rarely see.”
Plows were just beginning to push their way into residential neighborhoods in Providence on Tuesday. In many spots, the height and weight of the snow was too much for basic plows attached to pickup trucks, Mayor Smiley said; those spots would have to wait for heavier equipment to cut an opening and clear the way.
A travel ban remained in effect until noon, and police vehicles were busy transporting health care workers to their jobs at the city’s hospitals on Tuesday morning, the mayor said. At the height of the storm on Monday, at least one resident in medical distress was pulled on a sled from the person’s home to the street for pickup by an emergency vehicle.
Most businesses remained closed on Tuesday morning, though at Madrid Bakery, the manager, Adriana Munoz, who lives nearby, had tunneled her way through the snow to open the shop. She had recruited one employee; together, they filled coffee orders from grateful customers.
“If I can open, I open,” Ms. Munoz said.
Sled tracks adorned the quad at Brown, interspersed with the occasional snow angel. Thawing icicles up to four feet long hung over sidewalks on Thayer Street, menacing the steady flow of pedestrians in and out of a CVS pharmacy below.
A few blocks from the university, Diana Chan-Chute, 71, leaned out of an upstairs window in a property she owns on Governor Street, knocking down icicles that dangled from the gutters.
She said the storm had brought back vivid memories of the blizzard in early February 1978, when her mother abandoned her car after becoming stuck on a nearby highway and hiked home through the storm, arriving in time to celebrate Chinese New Year’s Eve with her family.
This time, Ms. Chan-Chute had more responsibility, as a landlord in charge of clearing snow from buildings where students live. But as she worked to strip ice from ledges, she said she had taken pleasure in the sounds of students playing in the snow on Monday night as the storm wound down.
“We could certainly hear their joy,” she said.
Mr. Smiley said he expected the awe to subside quickly, as winter-weary residents grow frustrated with the pace of snow removal. The fresh load of snow on Monday came on top of piles that had stuck around in bitter temperatures since the last major storm, a month ago.
“I think the mood is, spring can’t come soon enough,” he said. “I think we’re all over it.”
With hours of shoveling ahead, Ms. Silva and Mr. Sisti, who plan on getting married in July, hoped for a silver lining.
“I think we’ve gotten all the precipitation out of the way,” Ms. Silva said, perhaps optimistically. “So hopefully it won’t rain on the day of the wedding.”
Jenna Russell is the lead reporter covering New England for The Times. She is based near Boston.
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