SNOWPOCALYPSE 2026: LIVE BLOG
LIVE-BLOGGING SNOWPOCALYPSE 2026 FROM THE HUDSON VALLEY
Plow at work on the New York State Thruway south of Albany during the Great Bliizzard of 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
LYON MOUNTAIN, NEW YORK Jan. 25, 2025
The Free Lance News is live-blogging the Great Snowstorm of 2026.
I’m driving down from the Adirondacks and will be covering it this afternoon, tonight and through tomorrow in the Hudson Valley. I’ll be writing quick dispatches like this on conditions and, of course, taking photographs and videos of your favorite Hudson Valley spots. If you have any suggestions, call or text me. 518-524-1003.
I’m starting the day with this dispatch from Lyon Mountain, where it is -1 degrees. It has not started snowing here yet. From here I’ll be driving through Dannemora to the Adirdonack Northway which I’ll drive down to Albany.
New York’s maximum-security Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York on Jan.. 25, 2026. Photo creditL JB Nicholas.
NEAR EXIT 30, ADIRONDACK NORTHWAY 1:43 PM
1,262 Highest Elevation on the Adirondack Northway, heading south just north of Exit 30. Photo credit: JB Nicholas
When I pulled out of Dannemora it started snowing.
I’m writing this in the parking lot of rest stop on the Adirondack Northway just south of Exit 30. If you’ve ever driven to Lake Placid, chances are you got off at Exit 30. Although its more direct to get off the Northway at Exit 30, all the signs say to get off for Lake Placid at Exit 30. It’s because of the extraordinary scenery—sights a visitor would miss if they got off at Exit 31.
A few miles in, the road climbs through one of the mose ruggedly scenic roadside spots in all the Adirondacks. The road climbs through a mountain pass and at the top you pass beside a mountain top lake surrounded by cliffs. Its a wild calling card. Many people who I’ve met that now live in the area but once lived somewhere else have told me that those sights are what caused to dream of living in the Adirondacks in the first place.
New York State Police staying busy in a blizzard, Adirondack Northway, Jan. 25, 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
That includes me too. Who got off at Exit 30 and sucked in those sights when I was 11 or so on a Boy Scout expedition. Decades of expeditions later, I too now make my home in the Adirondacks. One of the aventures I had was hiking and camping up a valley right next to this rest stop. It climbs into the Dix mountain range in the high peaks. And I’ve climbed all its mountains, in summer, winter, fall and spring.
The Adirondack Northway is one of my life’s main highways. And I can’t help but reflect on this whenever I travel on it.
Its snowing heavily now. I’m about 2 1/2 hours outside Albany.
Adirondack Northway headed south into the blizzard of 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
ADIRONDACK NORTHWAY 3:00PM
I’m headed into the teeth of the storm now.
The temperature has risen slightly and reached the highest it will get, as it always does, around 3:00PM. Today its a blamy 6 degrees. The snow is falling at about an inch an hours but appears to be increasing. The North Country was forecast to be on the edge of the storm, so the further south I travel the harsher I expect the storm to be.
My now, the National Weather Service forecase for Albany calls for eight to 12 inches of snow followed by an additional seven to 11 inches overnight—for a total between 15 and 23 inches. With the windchill, the overnight temperature is forecast to feel as cold as minus 11 degrees.
I plan to stay in a hotel in Hudson, New York. There, the forecast calls for between 16 and 26 inches of total snow fall with an overnight temperature of 11 degrees.
Passing always a challenge in dicey weather. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
LAKE GEORGE, NEW YORK 3:45PM
As I drive south into the storm, more drivers bunch up behind slow-moving vehicles. Because I have high-clearance and four-wheel-drive with traction control I can plow through the deeper snow in the passing line and put them behind me.
Around Saratoga, a trio of giant state snowplows alinged like battleships and blasted snow over the side of the wilderness highway into the woods. A great plume of silvery snow dust followed them as they sped forward the blizzard’s blowing snow.
That’s fast, because I’m passing other cars. But I’ve driven on frozen, snow-covered roads in the Adirondacks for the last three winters. I know what I can do, but I also know what my vehicle can do—and it can do alot for relatively little in gas.
Leaving the Adirondacks, the trees beside the Northway change from hemlocks and firs to hardwoods. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Because she’s painted black, my partner calls her “Black Beauty.”
Black beauty has a silver six-inch tall butterfly on the her back windshield. For miles, we have the erie, snow-covered highway to ourshelves. The trees change after Lake George. Gone are the hemlock and pine of the high peaks. They’re replaced by towering hardwords, weighted with snow, some lean in toward the roadway.
Cars and trucks bunched up behind three snow plows abreast the Adirondack Northway during the great blizzard of 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
When I hit the interchange where the New York State Thruway and the Adirondack Northway meet outside Albany, there’s six or eight inches of snow already on the ground. Turning south on the Thruway, there’s about two lanes cleared enough of snow to do a steady 50 miles-per-hour.
New York’s other Kosciusko bridge, this one spans the Mohawk River on the Adirondack Northway just north of Albany. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
ALBANY, NEW YORK 4:35PM
In my years, how many times have I swung around the hairpin turn where the New York State Thruway meets the Adirondack Northway? Dozens, scores, almost 200 at least, maybe more. And most of those times I was either coming from or going to my home in New York City. But since my home is North Country now passing through this old crossroads feels backwards.
It doesn’t feel wrong, but it doesn’t feel exactly right either. Some part of me misses the City. But here’s the thing everyone who leaves realizes: the City we miss is the City we knew. Its not the place that exists now. We miss a fever dream. A wild reality that doesn’t exist anymore. Bodegas replaced with smoothie bars? Dive bars replaced with bottle service? No thanks.
The New York State Thruway south of Albanu during the great blizzard of 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Just like the trees changed along the Northway the further south I drove, the roadside changes at the Thruway enters the northern Catskills. With ledges and the occassional barren pine tree at the top of a cliff beside the highway. South of Albany, the Thruway follows along the top of a ridge, more-or-less, parrell to the Hudson River-which flows north-and-south to the left if you’re headed south.
So many memories. So many adventures coming to a close speeding down the same stretch of highway. So many different cars! My first was a honey metallic Jeep 1986. IaN 1988, I replaced with with a Black GMC Jimmy. For a couple years in the late ‘Aughts I had a 1985 AMC Jeep CJ-7. It was painted burgundy and had a softtop. But I cracked the frame, or it came like I never noticed, so our time together was doomed to be short from start.
18 wheel tractor-trailer that slide off of the New York State Thruway during the Great Blizzard of 2026. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
Short but fiery. I took to the Adirondacks for a week in the summer of 2007 and drove around with the top down like a kid. Then I drove back to the City and went back to work as a news photographer for the New York Post. Now, almost 20 years after that, I’m making this drive in a five-year-old black Hyundai.
In some ways, this is one of the best adventures yet. I don’t ever have to go back. I’m forever free.
A plow on the New York State Thruway during the Great Blizzard of 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
HUDSON, NEW YORK 5:30PM
Got off the Thruway about 5:15 and crossed the Rip Van Winkle Bridge at Catskill about five minutes later. The snow was blowing so strong I couldn’t see out the river below. I followed a plow across the bridge and watched as it blew snow over the edge into a white abyss.
About to cross the Rip Van Winkle Bridge over the Hudson River during the Great Blizzard of 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Up on the hill on the far side Olana rises, but of course Frederic Church’s Moorish masterpiece could not been seen.
I used 3/4 of a tank of gas to get here, so I stopped at the Stewart’s on the east bank of the Hudson River on the far side of the bridge. In my other, city life that I used to temporarily escape from, that Stewart’s was a frequent hitch-hiking stop given its prime location near the bridge on the way to Hudson.
There was a time, when I visited this Stewart’s once or twice a year but I hadn’t stopped there in a while. Hudson itself was a more frequent stop, given an Amtrak train stops there that goes straight to New York City. A lot of people make fun of Hudson given how rich its become since the Pandemic, when an entire generation of moneyed New York City residents bought country sanctuaries there.
I remember it more from the Crack era. Back then it was just another shitty Hudson River town where Crack dealers from Manhattan and Brooklyn traveled to as if they were some kind of Crack dealing pioneers. That both the police and the women were less wise to their wicked ways was a bonus, to scumbags like these, regular Davy Crockets of Crack.
The snow-covered road to Hudson, New York. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
The road across the Rip Van Winkle was a state road, but the road from the Stewarts to Hudson was Columbia County road. It looked like it may have been plowed once, if it had been plowed at all. Still, even though the snow was a foot deep, it was drivable with me winter tires and four-wheel drive.
For a road to a place as wealthy as Hudson is now, it looked like something out of a David Lynch movie or something. The last of the day’s dim blue light was fading to final black as the shitty LED streetlights kicked on. At least these were the latest LED bulds with an amber tint, unlike the original generation that drove people crazy with ER-bright white lights that blasted any romance out of the dark night.
Main Street in Hudson, New York, during the Great Blizzard of 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
I’d been dreaming of dinner in my favorite Hudson resturant for weeks. So as soon as I got into town I drove up main street headed right for it. Christmas decorations still hang over Warren Street. Nothing was open. It was pretty as it could ever but only the small city’s version of a bodega was open. I drove up Warren to where my place is but when I turned onto North Third I saw I was out of luck.
My destination, Feast & Floret, was closed. I discovered it in 2021, when I was living in hotel in the hills about 20 miles east of Hudson on the New York border with Massachusetts. The town was rightly named HIllsdale. At the start of the Pandemic, I spent a month squatting in a ski patrol hut on the top of an old, still family-owned ski resort called Catamount outside of town.
That winter, after tramping around the Adirodacks for the summer and losing a log cabin I made in Keene Valley, I ended up back at Hillsdale that January. I used Pandemic unemployment to pay rent and waited out the winter there. About half the place was rented out to families, some of whom had lived there for decades. Children had been raised in rooms there.
I went back to the Adirondacks that May. The long-time owners sold that hotel later that year. Last time I passed by it, it had a new name and all the long-term residents were gone.
Feast & Floret in Hudson, New York, during the Great Blizzard of 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
I spent that winter writing a book. I went for long walks in the hills outside of town past old farms in the winter afternoons. Sometimes I climed the mountain and visited the hut I stayed in that spring. I paid occasional visits to Hudson, and Feast & Floret. The place make a fantastic chicken Milanese that reminds of a fine Italian restaurant I used to work in as a kid. The perfect pasta dishes, flowers and grapa are just bonuses. Next time.
I stopped to take a picture of the place before I drove on up Warren Street. All the bars and restaurants were closed. It wasn’t a good sign. But being the experienced traveler I am I figured there was a good chance one place I knew would be open. The ghetto Chinese place that somehow has a found a way to hold on in the new South Hamption-ized Hudson.
I was right. The Food Sing Chinese Restaurant was open. Its pretty much the best Chinese food I know of north of New York city and that covers a lot of territory. Beats many places in New York City too. Just straight gourmet ghetto Chinese food. Get the Seasame Chicken and you tell me if it isn’t the best Seasame Chicken you’ve ever had.
The classic ghetto Chinese Food Sing restaurant in Hudson, New York, open during the Great Blizzard of 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
It was four degrees and still snowing just after 6:00PM.
HILLSDALE, NEW YORK 8:05
If state and local officials were managing snow removal on major highways and roads, I wondered what was happening in the hill towns outside Hudson like Hillsdale.
I decided after dinner to take ride out there and find out. The small town is about 20 miles due east of Hudson where it cross State Route 22 before climbing into the Berkshires and crossing the border into Massachusetts.
State Route 23 runs east and west across New York. From Hudson it heads east to the Massachusetts border. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Route 23 leads to Hillsdale. Its an old private turnpike for farmers who once hauled their product to docks in Hudson for sale and transport to New York City and beyond. Its also notorious as the scene of the first murder of a law enforcement officer in America.
Cornelius Hogeboom was shot by a group of tenant farmers dressed as Native Americans who were resisting the eviction of one of their own. Aristocratic-like “Patroons”controlled almost all land in the Hudson Valley at the time with something like fuedal justice. Hogeboom’s murder was one of the early chapters in the multi-century insurgency against the Patroons.
A plow headed west on Route 23 in Columbia County, New York, during the Great Blizzard of 2025. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
I passed a single, solitary car on the way to Hillsdale. 3 plows passed me headed west, but the road east looked like it hadn’t been plowed in hours. The snow was like a foot of flour. It was thick and dry enough that I had plenty of traction and steerability.
I drove through town and out past the hotel where I stayed during the Pandemic winter of 2021-22. I parked just outside of town on a hillside next to an old cow farm with a collapsed barn. The road is called Yonderview, and I used to walk on it all the time because the view from it is like a perfect pastoral postcard. But, this visit, all I could see was snow blowing sideways and all I could hear was the howl of the wind.
The main corner in the small town of Hillsdale, along the New York/ Massachusetts border in the Berkshires. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
The elevation here was higher than Hudson, so I expected the snow to be deeper. It wasn’t. It was about the same. I also expected the temperature to be lower because of the higher elevation. It was 13 degrees. 10 degrees higher than in Hudson. I thought a front may have passed, but the closer I got back to Hudson during the return drive, the colder it got.
On the drive back to Hudson I started looking forward to the giant bathtub in my room back at The Wick. I imagined luxuriating in barely-tolerable almost scalding hot water to warm and relax after a long day of driving around in the cold.
A pile of red snow in Hudson. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Back in town, the light a gas station sign cast on a five-foot high pile of snow caught my eye. As did the neon sign in the bar across the street. Then I was back at my hotel, running back-and-forth over the deep snow in my parking spot, packing it down to make it easier to escape from in the morning.
In the time it took for me to park and get my gear out, a 1/4 inch of new snow had fallen. It was still coming down pretty heavy. The overnight forcast calls for seven to 12 inches of snow into Monday. Tomorow’s high in the Hudson area is forcast to be 23.
Bar in Hudson, New York. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
HUDSON, NEW YORK Jan 6, 2027
It’s Day 2 of the Great Blizzard of 2026 and its still snowing!
Frederic Church’s Moorish masterpiece Olana during the Great Blizzard of 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas
Its 14 degrees and snowing at Frederic Church’s moorish masterpiece high on a hill overlooking the Hudson River and the Catskills. Church built the massive stone and brick home on landscaped hills after traveling through the MIddle East in the 19th Century.
In New York, Church is known for being one of the original Hudson River school master-painters. He named his castle-like home Olana. There’s about 18 inches of snow here. Its warmed slightly, and the snow now falling is smaller and wetter than the snow that fell yesterday. That puts an icy upper layer on the snow almost like a crust. If you walk on it, it crunches.
JB Nicholas reporting from Olana. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
CATSKILL, NEW YORK Jan. 26, 2026 9:32AM
After visiting Olana, I drove back across the Hudson River on the Rip Van Winkle Bridge to Catskill.
Catskill had been an affordable alternative to Hudson until recently. The same wave of Pandemic-driven gentrification that swept through Hudson and Columbia County on the other side of the river also infiltrated Catskill.
Its not quite as bougie as Hudson, but its well on its way. Think Williamsburg circa 2005—still working class here and there but tons of newcomers as well. Temperature and snow fall were the same as across the river: 14 degrees and 18 inches of snow.
City of Catskill, New York on the second day of the Great Blizzard of 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
HAINES FALLS, NEW YORK 10:44AM
The Catskill Mountains rise up from the Hudson’s historic floodplain about 15 miles east of the river. The “mountains” themselves are actually the floor of ancient sea that has been eroded through millenia with deep ravine-like cuts or clefts in their sides that drain whatever rain or snow falls on top of the ancient plateau.
The road to Haines Falls rises up through a “clove.” Photo credit: JB Nicholas
The Dutch were the first to settle the Hudson Valley and they called these deep cuts “cloves.” One such clove leads up from the valley to the 2,000 foot-high town of Haines Falls. The drive up is spectacular, with giant icicles hanging from the cliffs that rise up almost directly from the side of the road at places. In one or two spots the icicles drip ice onto the road bed itself.
My ears popped on the way up. In Haines Falls, snow much snow had fallen heavy construction equipment was being used to move it around. Mounds more than 10 feet tall were piled in places, including in front of homes. About two feet of snow had fallen, locals agreed. The temperature was 16 degrees and still more snow was falling.
2 feet of snow fell in Haines Falls, New York during the Great Blizzard of 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
STONY CLOVE NOTCH 11:27AM
After Haines Falls I headed west through Tannersville to the base of Hunter Mountain where I made a left south on State Route 214.
The road leads through Stony Clove, a 2,200 foot high notch that splits the Devil’s Path in two sections, east and west, between Plateu and Hunter mountains. The trecherous trail cross the road just south of a small pond beside the road called Notch Lake. The Devil’s Tombstone state campground is here too, as is the giant rock that gives the campground its name. Allegedly where the Devil is buried.
The road to the Devil’s Tombstone in the Catskills through Stony Clove, Jan. 26, 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Once past the Devil’s Tombstone, its another 10 or so miles to Phoenicia, New York. Situated in the wide Esopus River Valley, Phoencia usually has some of the best dining in the area. Brio’s, in particular, is a stand-out. In summer, the Town Tinker tube rental is literally world renowned.
But today all that was open was the Phoencia Dinner beside State Route 28. Besides the excellent food, its large front windows offer and panoramic view of the valley and Mt. Tremper to the north. Driving down Route 28 toward Kingston, the view opens and the full scale of the majestic mountains comes into view.
Its still snowing, though it has slowed to a trickle. It’s 17 degrees in the valley.
Catskill mountains rising up from the Esopus River Valley as seen headed south on state route 28. Photo creditL JB Nicholas.
SNYDER’S TAVERN 12:15 PM
In Boiceville I took a detour around the Asokan Resevoir on Route 28B because there was an old bar over there that I wanted to see if it was still open. Snyder’s was the name of the place. It was a one of those fairly typical country bars that was situated in a house. But if you’re from the City, like I am, those kinds of places seem exotic because you’d never seen a bar like it before. That’s why I always remembered it.
I think I remember it from fishing the Esopus River back in the 1980s, but I admit I may have imagined that. I for sure drove past it sometime in the ‘Aughts when I was out adventuring in the Catskills again after a long hiatus. But that time I drove past it was closed but it was still in business. Now Snyder’s closed, not sure how long but judging from chatter on the Internet, it doesn’t seem like it was that long ago.
The snow stopped falling for about an hour. A splotch of light even through the grey-blue clouds for a little while. Then it darkened and snow began falling again.
Snyder’s Tavern, West Shokan, New York, Jan. 26, 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
CATSKILL, NEW YORK 2:30PM
I took the Thruway back to Exit 21. The roadway was completely free of snow and the temperature had rise to 21 degrees.
The author driving north on the New York State Thruway the second day of the Great Blizzard of 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Instead of driving right back across the bridge to my hotel in Hudson, I parlayed at Dutchman’s Landing down by the river. Ice sheets covered the sides of the river but a channel open in the middle. Dark ducks bobbed in the icy floatsom. The air was clearing.
The bridge was clear and sharp not shrouded in a snowy fog like it was yesterday at this time.
Rip Van Winkle Bridge spanning the Hudson River, as seen from Dutchman’s Landing, Catskill, New York, Jan. 26, 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
This is a breaking news report. Check back for updates.
Send tips or corrections to jasonbnicholas@gmail.com or, if you prefer, thefreelancenews@proton.me