We've received about 39 inches of snow this month. The record for January is 43 inches so we won't quite get there, but it's still a lot of snow. We've had a big snow in the middle of each week of the month; the biggest was about 15 inches and the smallest was about 8 inches. The girls' schools have had four snow days.
When we get big snows that often, and with no thawing in between, we run out of places to put it all. They bring out construction equipment and pile the snow up on street corners. The pile at the bottom of our street is about 9-10 feet tall. The piles next to our driveway entrance are more than 5 feet tall. The sidewalks are trenches.
Carol has been enjoying the snow days with the girls. She's come up with fun indoor activities for the kids when they aren't out playing in the snow. One day they made snow sculpture. Another we all made paper bag puppets.
On most of the snow days I have also chosen to work from home because it would take forever to get to work on delayed public transit. The projects for the girls keep them in a separate room from me so I can actually work. After a couple of hours of snow blowing and shoveling, anyway.
All of the houses have huge icicles on them and ice dams. Ice dams can be a problem if they back meltwater up onto the roof such that it goes under the shingles and into the house. If the roof was installed properly it should be fine (with a sheet of waterproof material under the bottom 3 feet of shingles). So far, so good on our house. The main ice dam area on our house would be very difficult to access so I'm checking the attic and hoping for the best. I recently learned about a device called a roof rake and everyone in the neighborhood has borrowed our neighbor Victor's rake to clear as much snow as possible from their roofs.
I won't be riding my bike to work for a while. The roads are very narrow with huge snowbanks on both sides. There is barely room for two cars to pass each other on most roads and drivers would get very impatient to pass a cyclist.
We've had some fun activities on the weekend. We've made a couple more visits to the Museum of Science which the girls always enjoy. Last weekend we attended the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra's Family Concert which was followed by an instrument petting zoo. Audrey and Charlotte really enjoyed the music. One piece was "Peter and the Wolf" with the story narrated by a local NPR station's announcer.
We're supposed to get another storm in the middle of this week, just to keep up the pattern. They don't have a clear idea of how much yet. Let's just say that our winter vacation to Tucson, AZ and Palm Desert, CA in a few weeks is going to be very welcome.
1 comment:
Maybe it is time you install what we have here, snow strips, or melting wire/tape. You can turn it on when you want, and it melts the bottom area where it is installed. Helps avoid avalanches which can be a problem anywhere, and also solves your problem. Cost, about 1-2K for your roof footprint. Well worth the effort, water damage is expensive. We know, we had some small internal damage in the house this winter, and it cost us 12000 and about 1 month of 'remodeling' during the holidays.
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