January Nor'easter

January Nor'easter

Starting early Wednesday morning we had a classic Nor'easter. This is a common storm pattern in new England. A storm (or sometimes multiple storms combining) traverses the US mainland and turns northeast when it reaches the Atlantic. It spins up the coast and the center of the storm passes by us offshore. Since low pressure systems spin counterclockwise, the winds from such an offshore low blow from the northeast. Thus the name. They can bring a lot of precipitation any time of year, but in the winter when we often have a cold air mass from Canada sitting over us, those winds and that moisture from the ocean combine with the cold air to deliver a large amount of snow. We received about 15" at our house in about 12 hours on Wednesday. Parts of Massachusetts farther inland got more than 2'.

All of the schools and government offices in the state were closed Wednesday and the governor and Boston mayor encouraged everyone to stay home. My office was closed for the day. Pretty much everyone stayed put except the snowplow drivers.

The storm started at about 3:00 AM so by the time we all woke up at 7:30 there was already a lot of snow. We made Mickey Mouse pancakes for breakfast and stayed warm in the house watching it pile up outside. Finally at about noon we ventured out.

The snow was a little on the heavy side and perfect for building. I got the bright idea to build an igloo. Audrey helped for about 5 minutes and then went off to find something more fun to do. She became the tunneler. She and neighbor Parker dug a collection of snow caves all around the house. All the kids had fun struggling through the deep snow.

It took me about 4 hours to complete the igloo. After I finished I watched a video a friend sent me about how the Inuit build them. I did it completely wrong. Oh well. I also didn't have several feet of wind-packed arctic snow.

When we get that much snow they bring out the construction equipment to deal with it. The plows push it to the side of the road, but at intersections there is just too much of it. So front loaders come and collect the snow into huge piles. We have such piles at both ends of our block. They make great "mountains" for the kids to conquer.

Schools were closed again on Thursday but my office was open. It took me a while to get there with a late train that then had to stop for brake work.

The world looks very different with big snowbanks on both sides of every road and sidewalk. It looks like I won't be riding my bike to work for a few days.