Zulu is the last letter of the radio alphabet and the word for the hour everything else is measured against — a fitting name for a business whose season begins at three in the morning. ZULU OPERATIONS runs snow: plowing driveways and lots around Kingston, cutting walkways open, shoveling the corners a truck cannot reach, and laying salt where shade keeps the ice. Sitting between the Catskills and the Hudson, this town can catch squalls off the mountains and a wet coastal shove up the valley in the same week. The work is mostly waiting and then all at once — forecast watched, trucks staged, everything loaded before the first flake. What it buys is ordinary and worth a lot: everybody gets where they are going in the morning.