Looks like a whopper is on the way – a foot of snow tomorrow.
In the last hour the texts emails and robocalls have been coming in – no school, municipal offices closed, get your cars off the street ….
I hope all of you Village14’ers can sleep late, stay warm, stay home, and enjoy a snow day. For those who can’t, be careful out there tomorrow.
… and I promise I won’t complain about plowing 😉
@Jerry….you will be the only one! 😉
I was still waiting for the City to do some more plowing after the snow on Christmas!!
No robo call but Village 14 will be open all day. Comment early and often.
Sadly, I can’t sleep late because I have no excuse for missing a conference call for work with people outside the snow zone. However, after that I plan to relax and enjoy!
It will be interesting to see how the new administration handles its first snowstorm. Where the rubber meets the road will shape a lot of perceptions.
Interesting? Perhaps. But hardly fair. The same DPW department and public safety folks who were on the job the day before her inauguration will be on the job tomorrow.
While driving home this evening, I listened to some far right talk show host on Worcester radio saying this prolonged freeze and horrendous storm system are proof that scientific claims about the consequences of climate change are either misguided or total fabrications. Actually, there were indicators that these kinds of radical dislocations might be coming in some of the earliest air quality trends climate modeling that crossed my desk at EPA in Washington during the late 1970’s. By 1983-84 the trends were even stronger, but still not sufficient for the scientific community to draw many strong conclusions. Now, the proof is pretty compelling, if still incomplete. I’m not saying that this particular storm system is a product of climate change, only that the modeling has seen stuff like this coming for a very long time.
This is going to be a very hard storm to clean up from. Potentially some wet snow, then a deep freeze, and many surfaces are icy already.
The bigger question for me is whether there is school on Friday. I predict a late start.
My money is on no school ’til Monday, but we’ll see if I hear Fleishman’s voice on the other end of my phone tomorrow night…
Greg– When did it become unfair to judge an administration’s snow clearing performance? I’m under the impression that clear streets and sidewalks are an important part of the mayor’s job.
@Mike: Uh because this administration has been in place for 48 hours and couldn’t possibly have had a chance to implement any real changes to any clean up operation.
I guess the only second guessing one might have is, if things don’t go well, they could question keeping most of the Warren administration in tact. That’s not something I plan to do or think is warranted. Mayor Warren had a excellent DPW team.
By all early accounts this has been a good transition, unlike 8 years ago when Mayor Cohen didn’t even show up on Inauguration Day and there was a scramble to figure out who had keys to the mayor’s office.
It’s been entertaining to scroll through the photos of empty grocery store shelves filling my Facebook feed today.
Hope everyone got their milk and bread while they could!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i6zaVYWLTkU
I was glad to get the robocall from Terry Crowley as it is says she is still on the job. She is very competent and efficient
It took me a back every time Terry Crowley said Mayor Fuller as I am so used to her voice saying Mayor Warren. Almost like my brain was on robocall mode and starting to fill in Mayor Warren into the message.
People who say snow &/or deep cold are proof that global warming is a fallacy can’t see the forest for the trees, pardon the expression. It’s obvious to me in the way the weather behaves: it’s extreme, it changes on a dime, and there’s a series of a given trend that lasts (i.e. a run of heat, cold, drought). I was born in the fifties in N.E. and never in my life have I seen weather like we’ve had in the last decade or so. The seesawing/toggling gives the impression of a ship that’s trying to right itself, which doubtless the planet is trying to do.
P.S. – someone please sit the Predator-In-Chief down and spell it out for him 😛
Mary Mary,
I think you are correct that we won’t have school til Monday. Our Superintendent and city now rely on a two day snow event. In reality, the mall and the movies will have a good business on Friday. My kids will be bundled up and coming to my office (luckily my office has a more friendly bring your kid to work now) if there is no school. If we can all get to the mall and the movies, I believe that schools should be open.
Timing effects whether they can open school or not. If they cannot sufficiently clean up the sidewalks and routes to schools after the storm ends then the kids won’t have school. Based on the last robo call it sounds like they are expecting the clean up to take some time as they mention that it might take a while for sidewalks to be clear so I am anticipating that the kids will be off Friday. Though I agree with Stephanie it does seem like we will be able to get out and about tomorrow….that may also be wishful thinking on my part as I do not want to be stuck home for a few days.
I live on a side street. Not even an inch of snow. The plow has already been down the street twice! Christmas day it took five inches of snow before we saw the first plow.
@Allison. Thanks for introducing me to Vic Dibiteto on You Tube. I’ve already played several of his posts and haven’t had this good a laugh in years.
“Christmas day it took five inches of snow before we saw the first plow.”
Maybe because it was Christmas Day.
I’m one of the lucky ones who get to stay home today. My daughter, like Meredith, works from home and the conference calls will be ongoing.
My son is a health care worker at Winchester Hospital who lives in Newton and who doesn’t have the option of staying home. He’s driving to work now in the middle of the snow bomb. His shift starts at 3:00 but he’s covering for others who live even farther away. Please wish him a safe journey.
Sadly, I woke up early for the call only to find out it had been cancelled 1/2 hour earlier because both speakers hadn’t bothered to read announcements and were unavailable for reasons known since before the original pre-vacation email reminder!
@Marti – wishing your son safe driving and a not-too-crazy shift!
My favorite song for School closing: “School is closed” by Moses, on the tune of ‘Let it go”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjE72Q8s8wo
Enjoy and be safe.
@Isabelle – Love it! I think that just raised the bar.
I’ll now be expecting David Fleishman to sing our next snow day robo-call.
Maybe it’s not about the plowing or the clearing of sidewalks…maybe it’s about the extreme cold that is expected to descend upon us. Kids standing out for the school bus are in danger. What happens when the bus full of kids breaks down in the cold? Maybe that’s why school should be cancelled on Friday.
Boston has cancelled school tomorrow, but they’re also dealing with severe coastal flooding. I don’t think it’s supposed to be colder tomorrow than earlier this week – fortunately, the worst will be on the weekend.
NSHS is a different story. Given that they had to evacuate kids twice this week, maybe they should use tomorrow to try to get things fixed and safe so that kids don’t end up this time being evacuated into the snow.
@TheWholeTruth – I do agree that the deep cold is something to be concerned about, especially if there are any transport problems. That said, if we closed the schools for very cold weather then they would have been closed most of the past week and its beginning to look like most of next week. That’s not an reasonable option.
@Jerry, there is cold and then there is very cold! High temps between 10-15 degrees during this past week were cold. The forecast is for high temps bordering on 0* with wind chills in the 20-30 below number. That’s very cold and that’s the difference.
Just got the call. No school tomorrow.
@TheWholeTruth – Sorry, missed those details. I didn’t realize tomorrow was an outlier even during this cold snap.
In any case, no school tomorrow.
How did people find the roads yesterday morning? They were really nasty around my child’s school – people slipping all over the place – and I’ve heard similar things about other Newton schools. My street wasn’t plowed until 3 PM. But when I was in Waltham roads were much better.
I went across Newton and Waltham yesterday morninh and it was slow and slippery the whole way – both Newton and Waltham. It was about what I’d expect though since the snow was falling during the morning commute.
It was pretty bad. In fairness, the forecast shifted and we got more snow than we had thought, and during the
morning commute. Not helping things were those drivers who think their vehicles give them license to drive through anything regardless of the actual conditions.