Sunday, December 30, 2012

Back To Normal

This morning I awoke to a few inches of fresh snow on the ground. This was hardly a surprise - it had snowed for most of Saturday afternoon and was snowing when I went to bed. The only question remaining was how much snow would greet me when I got up this morning. Turns out I got around 5 inches of snow, which is an annoying amount. Anything less than 4 I can ignore and drive over, anything more that 6 I have to clear away or a car can't make it up the hill. At 5 inches you could go either way. Unfortunately I was afraid it was going to start to melt and ice over, so I ultimately broke out the snowblower for the first time since January. (Had really hoped to make it a full calendar year without having to gas it up.) Still I will admit I was pretty lucky. Some areas of Massachusetts got closer to a foot of snow, so even though the roughly 5 inches of snow this area got was kind of heavy due to the precipitation briefly changing over to rain before going back to snow, I can still safely say we did better than most. Honestly the driveway was clear in about and hour and once that is done it doesn't really matter how much snow is on the lawn, because it is not like that is a high-traffic area this time of year anyway.

Normally a little snow wouldn't be enough to blog about, but the thing which caught my eye was how many people seemed surprised by the snow totals. Every news station I turned on was reporting on location as if this was Hurricane Sandy all over again, instead of a natural occurrence which is just part of the way things are around here. (Maybe these reports are aimed at the same people who have to buy new shovels every year.) I'm starting to think a couple of light winters had made everyone forget that this is what normally happens in this part of the country at this time of year. Well, allow me to be the bearer of bad news: this is probably going to happen again in the very near future. It's kind of the way things normally work, we just got off easy for a year or two. In fact, this was probably just a warning shot. If the last couple of years of 'superstorms' have taught me anything it is that while we may not get as many storms as we used to, the ones we do get try to make up the difference. Remember, Mother Nature is always just waiting for you to let your guard down.


No comments: