Even so, freelance snow shovelers made the best of the situation.
"You've got to make the best of it," said one snow shoveler, Larry Seibert, this afternoon, when sun replaced a week of concrete-gray cloudiness.
Unemployed laborers found jobs with the city as snow shovelers at $1.50 a day.
Across the metropolitan area and the East, snow shovelers were out, scald-faced and snorting like stallions.
These hideous instruments were heavy and unwieldy, yet by learning to bend them to my will, I became the consummate snow shoveler I am today.
At least 33 weather-related deaths were reported across the country during the last week, many of them snow shovelers who had suffered heart attacks.
HOBOKEN, it seems, was the place to be for snow shovelers the day after the storm.
He began to read the accounts of tenement fires, of snow shovelers having heart attacks, but he was searching for something else.
Coming during the workweek, it will almost certainly mean snarled traffic and frustrated snow shovelers.
"We got some requests for snow shovelers and we could find them, but not like we used to be able to," he said.