West of Travis the land opens into Freshkills, mile on mile of grassland with nothing for the wind to lean against. Weather reaches that flat first, so by the time a storm gets to the streets it is already coming sideways. Green Environmental Services runs the plow through those hours — lots and driveways opened, walkways pushed clear, salt worked into the glaze that forms behind a melt. There is a particular satisfaction in blacktop that's wet and dark at six in the morning while the fields beyond it are still white to the horizon. That is the whole of it: the storm handled before most of Staten Island has looked out a window.