Ah, February 2026, this has been a particularly magical time of year when Long Beach Islanders huddled together like penguins on an ice floe out in Little Egg Harbor. It’s not affection. No, our thermostats are set to “Arctic Blue,” and nobody wants to pay the heating bill. I’m Taylor Mason, writing from Beach Haven, where 21 degrees Fahrenheit mid-month felt like a summer day. And then came this weekend’s blizzard – the icing on a snow-crusted “I Survived February 2026” cake.
If you’re reading this, congratulations – you struggled through another Super Bowl (a kinda lopsided, boring one), a…
Subscribe to keep reading
This story is from our archive. Get your SandPaper Annual Pass for access to our digital archive, plus everything else a pass includes. Details below.
Annual Pass — $18 Details
365-day access to:
- The complete SandPaper digital archive (stories date back to 2012).
- Full photo galleries from our photographers.
- The entire catalog of SandPaper games, puzzles and quizzes.
How it works
- Enter your email below and click to pay the one-time $18. Card details are entered on Stripe’s secure page.
- You’re in straight away — no password to create, and nothing to set up or manage.
- You stay signed in. If you’re ever signed out, or you read on a new phone or computer, we’ll email you a code to get you back in.
- Never auto-renews. Your pass is good for one year. We will email you when it expires so you can renew if you’d like.
See our site policies for more information.
Already a subscriber? We’ll email a code to get you back in.
