Cleanup day helps the region dig out A day to clean up, but this storm will be needing more

Despite two days of back-straining, slip-sliding labor, life still will not return to normal today for snow-walloped residents of the Philadelphia area.

City public and archdiocesan schools are closed, while numerous suburban districts were planning either to close or to open two hours late. Some trash-pickup schedules are altered. Cars remain blocked in, and roads could be slick after an evening freeze.

Notwithstanding a vast effort across Southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey, helped by a sunny day and temperatures above freezing, it will take more than a weekend to recover from the second-largest snowfall on record. The two-day total, most of it coming in a daylong fury on Saturday, reached 23.2 inches in the city - eclipsing a 21.3-inch dump in February 1983 but short of the 30.7 inches that fell in January 1996.

If there was a saving grace to the snow, it was that it had stopped by 8 a.m. yesterday, allowing for its removal on a day when schools and most businesses were closed.

Snowplow crews needed every minute - nowhere more perhaps, than in the city, where the aging grid of narrow streets, alleys, and byways makes snow removal a challenge.

"We don't get that much snow overall," Mayor Nutter said, as he inspected conditions in the city's Fairmount section during the afternoon. "But sometimes, when we get it, we really get it."

No kidding.

The mayor hit the streets yesterday for the second day in a row, clad in a gray parka and a blue Office of Emergency Management cap as he surveyed the efforts of city workers and residents. He paused periodically to field progress reports on his mobile phone, at one point asking Gov. Rendell for extra help from Pennsylvania Department of Transportation crews.

On the 2000 block of Parrish Street, Nutter tested the snow by digging in with his boots, just purchased for the occasion on Friday after a 10-year-old pair had worn out. The mayor noted that the snow was still 3 inches deep even after one pass with a plow.

He and other city officials urged sidewalk-shovelers not to compound the problem by heaving snow back into the street.

Streets Commissioner Clarena I.W. Tolson saw a man doing just that on nearby Ogden Street, and shot him a disapproving look.

Upon passing another shoveler, a woman who was carefully piling her snow on the curb on 20th Street, Tolson beamed.

"Thank you for putting your snow in the right place," the streets commissioner told her.