A lot cleared down to the pavement, salt laid in a fine bright scatter, the curb lines showing again where an hour before there was only white — that is the shape of a good night's work. First-Rate Snow Management plows, salts, de-ices and hauls snow from commercial properties across southern New Hampshire and the Merrimack Valley, out from the ledge-and-pine hills of Windham through Salem and Atkinson and down into Methuen and Lawrence. Winter announces itself early here: the light goes low and coppery over Cobbetts Pond, the oaks keep their brown leaves rattling, and the forecast gets watched storm by storm. Sidewalks at apartment buildings, lanes at retail centers, the aprons of hotels and banks and pharmacies and movie theaters — each one pushed back, widened, opened, so a Tuesday morning can go on being a Tuesday morning. And when the banks grow too tall for a lot to hold, the snow is trucked off altogether and the ground comes back.