When the biggest snowstorm in five years fell on Ridgewood last week, it took the alt-burlesque performer Mimi Silk three hours to make her snowman. Like everywhere else in New York, the sidewalks in Queens were quickly filled, first with intransversible piles of snow and then with more local inventions. Caves were dug out of the walls of plowed snow and forts built and defended in nearby playgrounds. But everywhere you could look, snowmen were being quietly sculpted and appearing magically, their carrot noses and button eyes announcing that winter, only two months too late, had finally arrived.