The Great Melt has begun, mostly at a glacial pace, but the snowpack is gradually sublimating and liquefying.
That is going to be a persistent and dangerous issue for the next several nights as melt-water refreezes after dark on driveways, roads, and sidewalks. We would not be surprised to see an uptick in emergency-room slip-and-fall visits.
Snow, even stuff as dense as what is out there now, has a certain porosity, notes Sarah Johnson, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Mount Holly.
That allows melt-water to percolate through the pack and ooze out of the bottom, joining forces with the snow melting at the edges.
What results is a steady flow of water on days when the temperature goes above freezing, as it will for the next several days.
That water freezes as the temperatures drops to 32 and below at night, as it will for the next several nights.
It is possible that the temperate won't quite make it to 32 in the city Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, but with all that snow chilling the environment, the water can freeze anyway.
After a visit to the emergency-room last winter, we took the doctor's advice and bought Yaktrax gripping devices to pull over our shoes.
We're getting no money from the company, but they do work.
Be careful out there.