perfidy

I've seen 38 inches of snow before. I'm from the snow belt of Ohio, where the dreaded "Lake Effect" picks up measurable portions of Lake Erie and dumps it in granular form over a huge swath of countryside from Cleveland to Niagara Falls. In Ohio, 38 inches of snow is a lot, make no mistake, but there's a difference between the big snows of my childhood and the big snow that is now inhabiting my town in coastal Massachusetts.

The difference? Space.

I'm from rural Ohio, out, as my father would put it, "where the hoot owl f**s the chicken." Consequently, there's a lot of space around in the winter that nobody's using for much. It snows a ton, you just move that snow on top of other snow-- no problem. But when you live, as I do now, in a city that was in large part planned before the Battle of Concord, 38 inches of snow is a different story. When most side streets barely admit one lane of traffic under optimal conditions and are as convoluted as a David Eggers story, where the hell do you put three feet of snow?

(It turns out the state doesn't know either. Just yesterday I heard a new term, "snow farm," for the plots of land where snow is trucked in to be dumped. Apparently some of these snow farms won't be done melting until July. )

As of this writing, eastern MA is halfway to paralyzed, with many side streets impassable, public transportation operating behind schedule, schools delayed, and mail undelivered to some areas (!!). Best of all, 5 more inches are on the way tomorrow. Fun!!

Fun fact:
Eastern Massachusetts got its average snowfall for a year in twenty-four hours on Saturday and Sunday, falling continuously at a rate of between 1 and 1.2 inches per hour. My particular town by some measures got the worst, at 38 inches total. (We win!) By way of comparison, a person would have to eat 100 pounds of beef in one day to get their yearly allotment of moo-meat. Just sayin'.