Snow Stops Falling But Piles Up in Elizabeth, New Jersey
With drifts piling up, it's a battle to drive and park in New Jersey.
ELIZABETH, N.J. Dec. 28, 2010 — -- Today's weather was all clear in Elizabeth, N.J., which got more snow than almost anywhere else in this week's blizzard, but now authorities are having trouble clearing the streets.
Elizabeth received more than two and a half feet of snow in the big storm, and today the plows seemed to just push the remnants aside, trapping cars in enormous mounds of snow.
Watch "World News with Diane Sawyer" for more on this story tonight on ABC.
Accuweather estimates that a whopping 912 million cubic feet of snow fell on Elizabeth during the storm. If cleanup crews poured all that snow into the new Meadowlands Stadium, it would fill the place almost two and a half times over.
Some remarkable stories have come out of all that snow.
Joan Pierre-Mann left for the hospital in labor Sunday night when the roads still seemed clear, but then the drifts stopped her Toyota in its tracks. She delivered her son, Daniel Christopher, in the car. Both are healthy and recovering in Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, N.J.
Residents Struggle to Find Parking
The storm that slammed Elizabeth has changed the habits of daily life for residents, at least temporarily. The biggest battle for those braving the roads isn't driving -- it's finding a place to park.
It's a big problem, particularly for the deliveryman for Spinner's Pizza. How does he park when he's running a customer's order?
"You don't, you just call the person as you're outside the house, and tell them to come outside," the young man told us on his rounds today. He said he just double-parks and "whoever's behind you is just going to have to wait."
Managing the Snow Chaos with the 'Chair System'
With spaces so tough to come by and streets so jammed, residents have found their own way of coping -- the chair system. When someone wants to reserve an open space for later, they just stick a chair in it.
When you drive down Elizabeth's streets, you see chairs everywhere -- elegant dining chairs, plastic lawn chairs, folding chairs and everything in between.
It's an imperfect system, to say the least. Elvin Perrero was digging his car out of the snow today to take his wife to a doctor's appointment, and he market the spot with a chair, hoping to park there again when he returned.
"Somebody's going to take it," Perrero said.