Wind off the Lower Bay hits Midland Beach with nothing in its way, and in a storm it carries the snow right up over the boardwalk and into the streets behind Father Capodanno Boulevard. It drifts strangely down here — bare in one spot, thigh-deep against the next fence. Mario's Landscaping Inc. of Staten Island reads those drifts for a living: plowing the drives, clearing paths to the door, breaking the crust that forms when the sea air freezes over a melt, and salting what stays slick. The flat blocks by the shore can be opened fast when somebody knows where the snow piles up. By first light the neighborhood is moving again.