The Blizzard of 2026 made national news.
In its aftermath, the Washington Post reported that Providence had received “a nearly incomprehensible amount of snow,” and noted that it snowed here for 25 straight hours. The paper’s headline proclaimed “A bonkers 37.9 inches of snow hit this Northeast city.”
Meanwhile, the New York Times, in its article “Providence, R.I., Is Used to Snow. But Not 36 Inches in a Day,” noted “The intensity of the snowfall felt almost surreal.”
Here at the Eye, we love to hear directly from our readers. So we put out a call on social media and in our Friday newsletter for first-hand accounts. Here are some of the words and images we received in response.
WASHINGTON PARK
Monica Huertas shared this photo of her kids playing “living room” in the middle of Ohio Avenue:
MOUNT PLEASANT
Ben Addison wrote:
This week’s winter storm brought out some mixed emotions.
In Mount Pleasant, many of us were left a bit disappointed with city services. It had been over a full 24 hours since the last bit of snow had fallen on Monday night and our network of side streets off Chalkstone and Academy were still untouched.
But almost as if on a collective cue, around Tuesday evening, a bunch of us got outside with shovels and snowblowers and took to clearing our street ourselves. Some of us did not even speak the same language. But we still acknowledged one another with grateful nods of recognition before putting our heads down and beginning shoveling.
We worked intermittently with the one neighbor with the most powerful snow blowing machine while the rest of us cleared up the aftermath. We all laughed at the absurdity of the huge snow piles we were creating. There felt a genuine sense of community that night as the sun set. Plow trucks arrived a couple hours later but our little enclave of neighbors had already given them a good head start.
Aimee D shared these photos:
WEST END
Leslie Kempsey wrote:
The people of Providence are shockingly well-adapted to dysfunction. Like New Yorkers who watch strangers fight on subway trains only to then gleefully pronounce, “Hey, it might be a bad city, but it’s our city,” Providence residents are similarly used to their share of “scrappy city” troubles.
Providence isn’t New York, a shining, internationally-renowned cultural hub. Yet every one of us deserves better than being trapped in their homes along unplowed, unsalted, and unmaintained streets for days while losing out on crucial income and being inaccessible to emergency services.
There has been a lot of messaging from the mayor’s office about the need for our patience, but very little about any need for their urgency. The facts are simple: the city of Providence knew days in advance that an historic snow storm would arrive late Sunday into early Monday. They knew that there would be travel and parking bans in effect. They knew that far less snow only weeks before had completely overwhelmed the system.
Then the snowstorm came and went, leaving many with no way to leave their homes, no way to go to work, no way to trek to unplowed bus stops, no way to walk down uncleared sidewalks, nowhere to put cars that rely on the city’s already-limited street parking. Days later, there were still a shocking number of residential areas left wholly untouched by salt, plow, or shovel.
Neighbors have come together to help dig out entire streets, sidewalks, and stuck emergency vehicles. This, while inspiring, isn’t their responsibility.
Traci Picard wrote:
I took this photo while shoveling out some bus stops and crosswalks in my neighborhood. Pedestrian lanes ARE travel lanes.
FEDERAL HILL
Amy Barlow wrote:
After the storm, [my husband] Peter Kammerer, Gabe Long, and I hiked over to the Sandwich Hut on Carpenter Street to clear the way for sandwich makers and customers. People were working up an appetite after shoveling for hours on end. I’m shown shoveling and Peter took the pictures.
What a week!
Ira shared this time-lapse video of the storm, as it looked on Broadway:
ELMHURST
Alexandra Hahn wrote:
The wind was so strong and so steady that snow piled up in strange and unusual ways. Although the storm dropped almost three feet in most places, these elevated spots on the back porch were strongly wind-blown, so there’s only about two feet here. But you can clearly see what direction the wind was blowing and how it etched the edges of these piles of snow.
That’s a paint bucket behind the table.
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