A winter storm that meteorologists are calling potentially historic started in the Pacific Ocean off the Baja Peninsula of California last Thursday, Jan. 22, and cut a swath about 2,000 miles long across the country before exiting off Cape Cod on Jan. 26.

The storm crossed the plains and the Rockies, hit Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma and visited the South before heading east, where it shut down LaGuardia Airport and New Jersey Transit.

On Sunday, my friend Woody called from Long Island. He kept going on about how long it had been snowing there and how he had to hang up and go out into the raging blizzard to get firewood because he had company coming. I wonder whether his guests were even able to make it, considering.

The next morning I texted my old friend Jay, who lives in the Hill Country of Texas. I’d just opened the blinds and looked out the window.

“I thought the snow had ended when I went to bed last night,” I told him. “Now I hear it’s expected to snow all day.” He replied he wasn’t going outside until the ice melted.

I sent Jay and Jan, another Texas Hill Country friend, a video of my deck and back yard buried in pristine snow, with fat snowflake clumps still floating down and blue jays sailing. Undaunted by the storm, the blue jays were the only birds out actively working their territory. The bird feeder next door was choked with snow and cut off from human aid by a stretch of terrain that must have looked unnavigable to my neighbors. In the video, my voice can be heard breathing “My God!” in unfeigned awe.

“I guess I won’t be sending you a pic of our snow,” Jan texted back from Blanco, Texas.

“Freezing rain and sleet top snow,” I told her.

“D and I spend a lot of time quibbling about sleet, snow, freezing rain etc.,” Jan answered. “We still can’t drive on the roads and Dax (their dog) doesn’t like going outside.”

I kept texting Woody snow videos. He sent no reply. Not even an emoji. Did he think I was trying to compete with him as to who got more snow? WAS I trying to compete with him as to who got more snow?

So much snow! My Honda Fit was now merely a mysterious white lump, easily mistakable for a snow-covered elephant, with only its protruding side mirrors giving it away. Due to the extreme cold, the snow was light and airy, and so it wasn’t difficult to get from my front door to the car. I pushed a shovel in front of me, creating great drifts on either side.

The precip weather app recorded that here in Keene Valley we got 1 foot, 8 inches of snow over the weekend. A disappointment, really, when it was obvious to me that the snow was prodigious, whelming.

I think “about 2 feet” sounds better. What about “close to 2 feet of snow?”

And anyway, I’m sure it’s much deeper than that. I bet we got more snow than Woody did.

All across the country school was canceled as children and dogs played happily in the snow. As you will have surmised, I too find these weather events exhilarating. A friend from the farmers market who lives in Burke texted, “There’s 18 inches of snow on the greenhouses so slowly clearing that off! Thankfully light and fluffy! Can’t wait for Spring and this makes me appreciate it all the more.”

The storm was great for skiers in the area, with 20 inches and a base depth of 20 to 36 inches with powder conditions reported at Whiteface Mountain over the weekend.

I’ve been thinking of childhood days sledding at Grandma Allen’s hill. My brothers and sister and our cousins used to carry our Flexible Flyer sleds up from the basement and out to the steep hill in Grandma’s backyard. The sleds were made of wood, with steel runners; you can lie prone on a Flexible Flyer and steer it. We would go speeding off on paths through the woods, paths we named Suicide and Daredevil. Our sleds weren’t like the saucers that predominate these days. To go spinning willy-nilly down a hill — do people no longer think they can control their destinies?

However that may be, this recent snow is probably too deep and fluffy for successful sledding or easy snowshoeing.

I’d better go dig out my car. Have a good week.

(Martha Allen, of Keene Valley, has been writing for the News since 1996.)