When the storm finally ended late Saturday afternoon, we were looking at a total of somewhere between 25 and 28 inches. And hours and hours of shoveling.
The storm itself was quite something, complete with howling winds and lighting and thunder (!). I have never seen snow fall so fast. At one point, we were picking up two or three inches every hour.
I shoveled our porch and front walk before I went to bed at 11 on Friday night. I was up at 5 on Saturday to handle some storm-related work e-mails. When I went out to shovel, at 6 am, snow had already risen past the front door, and I had to force my way out.
Anyway, now that the storm has passed (although there's another forecast for this Tuesday with an addition 4-6 inches possible), it is time to focus on digging out. We have on-street parking, which is realtor-speak for "no driveway." So a storm like this really puts the screws to us. Between the plows (which were good) and the drifts (which were better), we had snow more than halfway up both cars and easily three feet of snow between the driver's side and the street.
Long story short: I will probably be shoveling in my dreams tonight after freeing both cars. The kids, however, had a blast. As you can see. And in the end, this is what they will remember. As well they should.
I am sure my folks spent hours digging us out of the blizzard of '78. But I have no recollection of that. What I do remember is the intense quiet that settled over everything. And how all that snow seemed kind of magic, like the normal rules had been suspended for a while. This may have been due to my neighbors, two bigger kids named Anthony and Andrew who added to the drifts and built a ramp of snow up to their garage roof and launched their sleds from it.
That last picture above is Sam standing on our holly bushes, completely help up by the snow. Maybe it's a good thing we don't have a garage. (Although after six plus hours of shoveling today, I'd definitely take a driveway.)
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