Quote:
Originally Posted by Buccaneer
Overhead power lines + many trees + winter climate = Yikes.
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Outside of maybe the first hour or two where it was normal density, that was some of the lightest, fluffiest snow I can recall. Which led to the massive blowing and large drifts that made travel so dangerous during it (not that many tried - from what I saw driving home from work at 5:00 people didn't exactly adhere to the 4pm ban, but I don't think anyone intended to enforce it then, and everyone except plows and emergency vehicles seemed to off the road entirely by like 7 from what I could see - no repeat of '78 with cars getting trapped on highways up here), but led to very easy shoveling afterwards.
The trouble was/is, there's nowhere to put that much snow, so with weather projected to be low 40's at best and dry the next week after today this precipitation will be very important. I'm rooting for it to switch from snow to rain as early as possible and melt at least half this stuff, but that increases the risk of flooding along rivers (or any storm drains that are clogged/get backed up), and roofs/tree limbs collapsing due to weight. Outside of a couple South Shore/Cape communities that got hit hard the timing (starting Friday night) and density of this storm was pretty perfect in terms of keeping people safe and the economic impact to a minimum - and people have basically treated it as a 3-day vacation, drinking inside, walking down streets, accepting that all roads are half their normal width if they do have to drive somewhere, etc. We'll see how things play out today - hopefully the region's luck holds out and enough melts we can widen the roads back to their normal number of lanes, etc, but it could be dicey.