WEATHER

Baby, it’s cold outside!

Residents cope with extreme weather

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After yet another round of snow and freezing rain coated Long Island Saturday night into Sunday morning last weekend, Merokean Bob Young spent four hours chipping away at the ice that froze over the sidewalk and storm drains in front of his Central Avenue home, across from Birch Elementary School.

Doing so allowed rapidly melting snow and ice to flow freely into the drains on Sunday afternoon. If he had not put the effort into clearing the drains, Young said, his block would have likely become a sheet of ice overnight, just in time for school on Monday morning.

Young used a log splitter to “bust up” the ice. “It was a mess,” he said. “It was unbelievable.”

Young was like so many residents across the Bellmores and Merricks, who spent a chunk of their weekend cleaning up after winter hit the community with yet another storm, during which temperatures plunged once again into the single digits and teens.

As of press time on Tuesday, snow had covered the community for four weeks, and the temperature in Merrick had risen to 8 degrees Fahrenheit at 7 a.m., from near-zero overnight. Things were so bad that the Town of Hempstead closed Norman J. Levy Park and Preserve in south Merrick because trails were potentially dangerous in spots.

Despite the hardships that winter has brought, Young, a luge and snowshoe enthusiast, said he’s looking at it all through an optimistic lens. “I’m just hoping I get a good winter experience with the little time we have left. I’m just looking for winter to be winter,” he said. “I love the beach, but there’s a time for every season. Now it’s too cold. In summer, it’s too hot.”

Throughout the community, folks said they were making the best of it and, at times, thriving, despite the weather. Michael Hammer opened Merrick Bicycle Shop with his brother-in-law Dan Yuricic in April 2014. With cycling being a warm-weather sport, you’d think a shop like Hammer’s might be hurting. Not so, he said.

Hammer and Yuricic anticipated a winter slowdown in bicycle sales and added snow blowers to their inventory. The move has paid dividends.

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