Anyway, we had this big storm. One of the news channels said it was the fifth biggest snow storm on record in Boston. It seems to me like many other notable snow storms I’ve lived through. It’s winter in New England. Some times it snows. Last winter and so far this one (that little mess back in October not withstanding) we’ve had it easy. Made up for the year before when I’d run out of places to hide the, um, places to put the snow…
* cough *
Now the funny thing about our friend Nemo is that I was concerned that I’d wind up with two or three feet of snow on the roof and only be able to clear the edges with my roof rake. You see, it’s supposed to rain on Monday and that soaking into several feet of snow on the roof could spell disaster. Fortunately this was a very cold and thus dry powdery snow. The wind cleared the roof for me.
So how much did we actually get? That depends on how you look at it… On the one hand there was bare ground in my yard this afternoon. And not five feet away there was a drift over three and a half feet deep piled up in front of my Westy.
Out front in the main driveway I’d say a good number was about 29 inches. That was the deeper part of the snow field I had to move to get my flea van out of the carport. Excuse me “out from under the awning.” Carports are verboten according to the park rules.
Sadly there was one casualty from my efforts at digging out from Nemo: my little Toro snow blower has gone the way of most mechanical things when actually used. I don’t know if the belt snapped of if a shear pin failed, but after doing yeoman’s work throughout most of the job its motor now spins freely and the auger does not. I can move the auger by hand but the motor and auger are no longer talking to one another.
I wonder if I can get Pixar to replace my snow blower? Nemo was their storm after all…
2 comments:
The whole 'world ending storm' thing gets really tired for me. I've never dealt with snow in the Big City (any big city, really) but its snow... its winter. Yeah, winter can kill.. its winter. I'm confident that people can deal with it, as you so competently are (shame about the snowblower, though). My Lovely Wife's cousin lives in Brooklynne, and she went to a house party during Sandy, which I felt was bloody stupid. As long as people avoid being bloody stupid, they are usually ok (as, again, you are). As for image software, I recommend GIMP (dumb name, good program). Its free, opensource image suite software, available on Windows and Linux (don't know if its Mac friendly). Pretty versatile, esp at the price. Stay safe out there!
Well, I suppose the weather channel thinks they need the hype to get the ratings. Apparently they’ve forgotten the message behind the story of the boy who cried wolf. After enough of these ‘OMG there’s weather!’ and running around like their hair’s on fire hypefests people may not pay attention when a truly serious situation is bearing down upon them. “Super-Storm Sandy” was a big storm from the point of view of how much of the East Coast was affected. But it was a marginal category 1 hurricane. And none of the radar images I saw had even the slightest hint of the storm wearing its underoos on the outside… Was there damage? Absolutely! It was a hurricane. Are people’s lives still affected by it? Yes, unfortunately they are. Was it a ‘storm of the century'? Not by a long shot. But even at that it was a hurricane and needed to be dealt with accordingly.
With weather, as with most things, it is important to be aware of what’s going on around you and then to apply that most uncommon commodity ‘common sense’ in deciding how to handle it.
I’ll definitely look into GIMP. Thanks for the tip!
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