Blizzard Nemo

“This blizzard set new records for snow fall, beating the infamous storm of 1978. Dropping nearly three feet of snow in less than 24 hours, this storm reached such an intensity between 10 pm and 1 am last night, that several emergency vehicles and large snowplows got stuck and had to be temporarily abandoned.  According to the officials in City Hall, New Haven County was hit the hardest of any region in New England.”

— Alderman Adam Marchand in an email to the city reminding us that the roads are still closed to every day traffic even today, Monday, a full weekend after the storm.  (To be honest most of the side streets weren’t even plowed until today.)

Yeah, we got hit with quite the storm.  The New Haven count for snow was 34″ with the town nearest our house topping us at 36″.  The work involved in this one storm is similar to our first winter here, but that was a few months filled with back-to-back storms.  This year all the snow came in one fell swoop.

It was a wild show and we enjoyed the front row seat to the vehicles trying to traverse a blizzard up an unplowed Whitney Avenue on Friday night.  Jacob spent a good part of that evening helping cars that were stuck in the snow get going again.  Jacob was out during the hours the Alderman mentioned in his email about being intense. I can’t imagine being out in that wind, Jacob could feel the ice tearing at his face and eyes if he ever dared to look north.

Saturday, I spent the day joyfully shoveling in the sunshine.  There was a lot of snow but Jacob and I already knew we weren’t going anywhere for a while.  I like that a lot about our days right now: no hurry.  There were piles of people out in the streets, some cleaning their cars off, other just looking around taking it in, full of wonder, and, of course, some were documenting the aftermath of the storm before the snow had been removed. It was beautiful.

There was such a sense of community on Saturday.  I wandered up a side street that hadn’t been plowed and met Dan, my labmate, digging out his car.  Anna and I even went out for part of the day to take it in.  She loves going on walks.  She was sad we didn’t get to walk far but she still enjoyed patting the snow and sitting in it.  Why were their walls on her walking path?  There was just so so much snow and Anna just had to touch it, stand in it, throw it, and, most importantly, talk about it.

Since Jacob spent Friday shoveling and I spent Saturday shoveling, we took a break on Sunday.  The weather was still nice so we did venture out for a bit.  Jacob hugged/tackled me into the snow and threw Anna into the snow.  We made the best of it by making snow angels together (an activity she had requested, by name, at lunch).

While Anna was napping, our good friends the Hustedts showed up, having walked from science hill!  We caught up since we have all been traveling for months.  And when we woke Anna up on accident, they enjoyed the snuggley girl she can be right after a nap.  She also read magazines to them and we showed them pictures of our families and our travels.  I was so happy to catch up with them and to be able to enjoy some socializing even though church had been canceled.

Today Jacob did a bit of shoveling near our car.  Maybe we will get it out in a day or two after we put some work in.  It sure is a lot of snow, so we might be shoveling for the rest of our days.  Anna and I went out for a walk after dinner tonight, everywhere that wasn’t a huge pile of snow was a deep puddle of slush.  Today was very warm and so the shoveled areas melted a bit and we came home with very wet feet.  Anna loved jumping in the puddles and meeting the dogs out for their walks too.   I’m not sure if the week of 40 degree weather will clear up our driveway for us, but wouldn’t it be nice?