Why New Englanders Hate Snow

I am experiencing winter shock. Like culture shock... except colder. It has snowed 6 times in the past 9 days. Three of the days were blizzards. It is not even officially winter yet. Apparently, this is not normal in New England (we have already received almost 2 times as much snow as they got last year Nov-April). But, they also tell me, nothing is "normal". The weather is so unpredictable, today they told us on the morning news cast that we'd have a light dusting of 1 inch of snow. Boston College stayed open all day as inch after inch after inch piled up. In the end, we had received an inch per hour... all day! The other day, the nice newscaster gave a 90% chance of rain. It didn't even mist. As you'll notice, this Californian is learning to check her weather forecasts...not that it helps!

Snow, our pure and delicate friend, can be a real pain in the A-- (I'll let you fill in the blanks so that I don't come across as the crotchety Bostonian I am starting to feel like). "But how can this be?" you may ask. I found it hard to believe myself before 7 days of slogging through mud flavored slurpy, ankle deep. After all, it is so lovely on the trees and bushes, so soft to walk through when freshly fallen. In California, more snow means better snowboarding, right? I suppose they feel that way in Vermont, too, or the suburbs, where the roads are wide and easily plowed-where everyone parks in a-covered-gasp!-enclosed-garage. In Boston, snow means every road is reduced to half it's width until the snow melts, which, if your weather is like ours, means March. If you park in a lot down a hill of ice, like we do, driving is out of the questions. (I dug my car out the other day out of sheer desperation and it took me an hour and a half, after which I got stuck heading up the drive and had to get a push, so I wouldn't need to be towed!) Not driving means you can't Christmas shop or buy a gift for your office White Elephant (they call it a Yankee Swap). True, you can still commute on foot, provided you are willing to tromp through knee deep snow. Where snow piles up on what were once sidewalks, one is forced to venture out into the street, angering already enraged drivers who fight through jammed narrowed passes which double their daily commute. These oft-unshoveled sidewalks prevent even simple errands like jogging over to Kinko's to print out your Christmas letter. Walking to the T in the morning means ruining a pair of lined Ann Taylor work pants (the only kind that are warm enough to wear to work). Buying milk becomes a feat I mentally gear up for like a drive through L.A. during rush hour. And let me be sure to clarify, it isn't the cold I'm complaining about. So far, the temperatures in the teens and twenties haven't bothered me a bit. It's the blasted precipitation that falls from the skies, freezes our landlords' driveway into a sheet of glass, covers the cars so completely that you aren't sure if you are walking around a car, or a giant plow-pile, and darkens the skies so thoroughly that nither a cheery ray peeks through all day.

I am counting down the hours till we land in San Francisco for Christmas. Don't blame me if I come empty handed, without presents more than a pocket full of ice-balls and chapped lips. You can thank Old Man Winter. As for me, I'm dreaming of a black Christmas, just like the freeways I used to know...

Winter...Wonderland?

Today we were let out of work at 1 pm. I took a picture of my commute home.



At least we didn't try to move in the snow. Here's a pod just like the one we used which I saw two girls trying to wedge closed in the snow down the street at the outset of this afternoon's blizzard.



We are expecting 12 inches of snow in a 6 hour period today. That's what they call a "white out". While I've lived through a snow storm here and there during my winters in Virginia, I was unfamiliar with this term before today. Allow me to explain. A white out is when you are driving home from work and are admiring the snow falling over the nearby reservoir, and the next minute you look back at the reservoir and you see nothing except white. Huh! I am still trying to get used to sundown at 3:30 pm. I mean, it's not Alaska, people! What's up with the sunset???

The other day I had to laugh out loud when I picked the morning after an ice-storm to drive to work. Like a truly pathetic ex-state-riate in New England, I peeped through my blinds around 7 am to "check the weather" as we do in CA and noticed that there wasn't any more snow on the ground (after having taking the "T" for several days due to snowy roads.) I thought, "Hooray, I can drive to work again! Winter must be temporarily over." It wasn't a step beyond our front porch leading down to our driveway that I learned how see-through ice can get. A good 1/4 inch of it was covering our porch. If that wasn't ominous warning enough, how about the fact that no one in our 15 car parking lot had removed their cars to drive that morning? As I ice-skated down the parking lot driveway, I considered bargaining with God that if he'd get me to work, I'd quit driving until March. At that point, I was far too late to catch the T.

When it comes to weather, I'm not what you'd call a "quick" learner. This morning, I was lured behind the wheel again when after testing our front steps carefully to ensure that the ice had melted, I felt confident that the roads would be safe. It's a good thing I work in Human Resources at the University. We were the first to know that things were shutting down when the skies began to dump buckets of flakes around noon.