It was all hands on deck in a coastal Long Island town that landed in the record books over Monday’s blizzard — with a local plow operator spending more than 50 hours clearing a single Target lot.
“I’ve never seen it this bad before,” said Gershon Benegas, an Islip contractor who has plowed snow for commercial businesses and their parking lots for more than 10 years.
Benegas said plowing the nearby Target’s parking lot usually takes him about 25 hours after a major storm.
But he said he’s already spent more than 50 hours trying to clear it after the latest blizzard — with plenty of more work still ahead of him.
The National Weather Service recorded 31 inches of snow at the Islip Airport in Suffolk County — handily beating the town’s previous record of around 27 inches from 2013.
“In my 27 years of life, this is by far the most snow I’ve ever seen,” said Catalina Rojo, a healthcare worker who lives up the street from the airport.
“The snow comes up to my stomach, it towers over my dog, that has never happened before,” she said.
But some other Long Island winter veterans seemed unfazed.
“This is that old school snow,” said Mario Blanco, who was outside shoveling his property in boots and basketball shorts.
County officials told The Post that crews are continuing to work around the clock to clean the unprecedented amount of snow off local roads.
“We have faced a historic snowfall and came together to confront this massive storm,” Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine said.
“Our crews continue to address the aftermath,” he added, thanking residents for their patience and cooperation as they work through the mess the storm left behind.
By Monday afternoon, plows were still out carving narrow, slushy lanes through what looked more like upstate ski country than suburban Long Island.
