At first, they danced in the flurries, pirouetted on the Common, slid along merrily on the lightly dusted sidewalks of the Back Bay, all the while snapping pictures as the city donned a graceful white cloak of snow.

But as the icy bite of the Blizzard of 2013 took hold in Boston, the snow revelers fled, leaving a vacant tundra of empty squares and abandoned thoroughfares that would have felt peaceful if not for the roar of the nor’easter.