The girls and I were pretty sad when it was nearly 60 degrees the day after Christmas. "We'd just like one good snowstorm," we said. "Maybe one snow day out of school," said Lainy. Oh, if we only knew!
As you've probably heard, we got much more than we bargained for! This winter in New England has been absolutely unbelievable! After 4 huge snowstorms in as many weeks, each dropping a foot of snow or more, we have been literally buried. The craziest stretch was when we got over 50 inches of snow in one week! This winter has broken every record ever recorded except one: largest amount of snowfall in a single winter. We are two inches shy of that record, which will probably be broken tomorrow with another storm (hopefully the last).
At first we were excited about all the snow. But as the snow drifts on either side of our driveway grew to be much taller than Brad and me, the novelty started to wear off. Our backs and shoulders ached from all the shoveling, and driving anywhere was downright dangerous because the drifts were so high you couldn't see around intersections. We would watch the weather forecast in disbelief each week as another blizzard was announced. All we could do was shake our heads and try to have fun with it.
Our kids have loved all the snow. Our yard has a perfect little sledding hill (which got bigger and bigger with each storm). We made some sweet sledding runs and snow caves, and the girls have loved playing "King of the Mountain" with Brad. He could literally throw them off the hill and they'd just land in soft powder, giggling. Samuel was very timid at first. He would just stand in one spot eating snow. But he has gotten a little more adventurous!
Luckily, Brad has been working in a clinic outside of Boston since January so he didn't have to commute in to the city. (Commuting has been a nightmare for people. The subway is just barely getting back to a normal schedule.) We counted that a huge blessing!
A few crazy facts for you: School kids in Massachusetts didn't have a single full week of school for all of February. They spent more days out of school in February than in! The City of Boston awarded citizens free Red Sox tickets for shoveling out fire hydrants. The MBTA (the subway and commuter rail) was paying volunteers $50 an hour to help shovel off their tracks. Downtown Boston was a mess. There was simply nowhere to put the snow. At one point Boston had snow incinerators brought into the city that were melting 400 tons of snow an hour to try to keep up!
After a few days of warmer weather the snow is starting to melt. Spring is coming! (Just not too fast, please, or every house in MA will flood!)
I guess we're glad to have been here for this unprecedented winter. We have stayed warm and dry. I'm sure it's something we'll be telling our grandkids about someday. "I lived through the Boston winter of 2015!"
Pictures in chronological order (so you can see the progression)
This last one was taken on Wednesday when we hit 50 degrees for the first time since December. 50 degrees never felt so good!
