New England Dopers Will Soon Get Historic Blizzard

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

When I went to bed at 1am it was just barely snowing. You literally had to watch for 15 seconds to spot a flake. 45 minutes ago I had trouble getting the back door open to shovel off the deck because there’s already about a foot of snow out there. Some parts of the state have already gotten 20". Clearing the back deck made me uneasy -over the moderate howl of the wind I could hear a tree a couple hundred feet up the hill creaking ominously… we have way too many poplars, and I’m sure that if that tree comes down today, it won’t be the only one. I just hope it doesn’t hit the house when it goes.

So far there are hardly any power failures (a tree did take out power for 7K people, but they’re working on it) which is something to be grateful for. I’m also grateful that my office is closed through noon tomorrow. I’m still trying to decide if I’ll work from home for 4 hours tomorrow, or to say screw it and take the afternoon off. I’m definitely not up to a nearly hour drive each way for a half day.

I went grocery shopping on Sunday. There wasn’t a space to be found anywhere near Market Basket, and just a few much farther down the plaza’s lot. Despite a lot of people in the store, they were keeping up with stuff on the shelves.

On the way home from work yesterday I stopped at both Target and Walmart because for some inexplicable reason Target doesn’t carry fish food and I’m nearly out but needed something from their pharmacy. There were some bare shelves in the grocery sections, and I was glad I avoided going to Hannaford or Shaws on the way home too because I’m sure that grocery stores were panicky at that point.

82

By around 5:30 yesterday, all the panic shopping was over and Market Basket was pleasantly uncrowded although the cashiers looked a bit frazzled.

I’m thinking we’re on the low end of estimates. Very windy, though, so it’s hard to say how it’s accumulating.

83

Most of my co-workers live near you, so I’m the odd man out–everyone else is buried. For once it’s nice to live in NJ.

84

About 2 feet in my town. I don’t know how they measured it with all the blowing and drifting. Still more time to go with the storm – it’s still snowing at a good clip, and lots of wind.

My office is closed and we’re supposed to be working from home, but it seems that we’re heavy on “home” and light on “work”.

85

We probably got a solid 18" here, with about 3 feet of drifts in front of the garage.

86

Well that was lame. 7" in Central Park. What a bust. Why was the forecast so *incredibly *wrong? I mean, NYC schools closed & the subways shut down, two things that rarely ever happen, so they must have been pretty sure it would be bad and then… nothing.

87

All those whining about the underwhelming effect in NYC I am sure will be cordially invited by New Englanders to come up and shovel.

I suspect that even 2 years in the aftermath of Sandy the system may have been much less “recovered” than the MTA let on and the public thought.

88

Apparently it’s because the storm ended up forming a little to the east.

here’s a good rundown.

89

Yep. There’s a metric ton of snow in my parking lot that we need to move…

And I suspect officials don’t want to risk Sandy II, Electric Boogaloo, in snow form. Safer to just shut things down.

90

Still going strong in Maine, high winds and fine snow, visibility is about 1/2 mile, we have drifts up to 3-3.5 feet, on the flats in areas sheltered from the wind, roughly 20 inches or so, it looks like we’re still in some of the heavy bands, still more to come.

It was a good thing work closed today, in fact, most places are closed, to let the road crews and emergency responders do their things

Amazingly, we haven’t even lost power, and if you’re familiar with the legendary incompetence of Central Maine Power, that in and of itself is amazing, CMP has a reputation for losing power on a bright sunny cloudless day, so for the power to stay on in a storm like this, that’s impressive

I’ll have to wait for the storm to move out before I compare it to the infamous blizzards of my childhood, '76 and '78, but so far, this one isn’t even close, if, on a scale of 1-10, the blizzards of '76 and '78 were 10’s, so far, this storm is around a 6.5-7

I stand by my initial rating of “meh”

And I’m glad I haven’t had to take that sodding loaner car out in this storm, I would not enjoy that experience at all…

Hold on, Cooper wants to say something…

Hi Dopers and Doper Doggies, I don’t know what Dad’s talking about here, this is a yucky storm’ there’s this cold white stuff blowing through the air that sticks to my fur and stings my eyes, it’s all over the ground too, it comes up to my haunches in most places, some places it’s higher than me, this is a scary, cold, and altogether yucky storm, I normally love being outside, even when this white fluffy stuff is on the ground, but not today, I’ve commandeered dad’s bed, and the comfy comforters on it and I’M…NOT…MOVING… bed GOOD!, bed comfy!

Okay back to sleep now, maybe when I wake up the storm will be gone and all the white fluffy stuff with it…

91

I own a condo, so the association contracts out snow removal. My driveway has been cleared (for now, anyway. It’s still snowing, though maybe not quite as heavily) and it looks like there was 20-22 inches of snow removed.

This going to be another storm where we have to pay to have snow removed off the property. Anyone want some snow?

92

If you could pack it all up and ship it here to California, that would be great. We wouldn’t even mind if it melted along the way…

93

I’m north of Boston, and we’re getting walloped. We’ve got about 2 feet of snow on the ground, and it’s still snowing heavily, and not predicted to relent for another 12 hours. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have 3 feet when it’s over.

94

I’m in Portland ME and that’s where it looks to be headed here as well. The only people I’ve seen out my windows–and I’m in town–are cross-country skiers, struggling.

95

Yes, please!

Anyone here live in New Hampshire? I was curious about the conditions at the top of Mt Washington during a storm like this, and afterward, so I checked-out Mt Washington Observatory. Those are some nice metrics!

96

I went outside to start digging out my car (I have a lot of cool-guy shit from the military so I was comfortable). I’m honestly not even sure where to begin. Can I just stay indoors until it all melts on it’s own?

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You don’t have any leftover C4?

Of course you can. Just remember, the longest journey begins with a single “screw it, I wonder what’s on the Netflix queue”.
Thanks to the wind, my car is absolutely free of snow. But there’s a sizable drift behind it that’s going to have to be dealt with. Tomorrow.

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Those readings aren’t really far from normal for Mt Washington in winter. This storm didn’t have a huge impact up there. Winds of 100 MPH+ and temps below zero are pretty common.

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Not too bad here, although they say it will continue into the night. I did take a work from home day, just to not have to crawl to work and get in the way of plows.

100

Still blowing and snowing in Maine, it looks like the storm has stalled over us in the weatherbug map, drifts range from 3-6 feet, flats look to be an honest 2 feet

I may begrudgingly admit that this nor’easter may be close to meeting my benchmarks of '76 and '78

I may end up being snowed in tomorrow as well, and have to use another vacation day :frowning: I hate using up vacation days…