It's currently 11:45 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 12 -- about eight hours after a fairly steady snow began falling in Kingston.

I just drove from the Freeman office to my house -- a quick, 1-mile trip within Uptown Kingston that includes Hurley, Washington and Lucas avenues; Millers Lane; and the street I live on, Grandview Avenue -- and the roads, all of them, were unplowed.

Eight hours after the snowfall began, and not a single road was plowed. Amazing.

And we're not talking about out-of-the-way back roads here. These are three major thoroughfares and two well-traveled side streets. (The lack of cleaning on the side streets was especially obvious because there were no tell-tale piles of plowed snow at the bottoms of people's driveways.)

No wonder the Kingston schools have to shut down after even a minor snowfall.

In fairness, though, I should note that I did see one city of Kingston plow as I was driving home. Unfortunately, it was parked on North Front Street in front of the Dietz Stadium Diner. I guess the driver had better things to do than make our roads safe for travel.