Throughout this winter we’ve had regular snow, a few inches here, a few more there … each storm isn’t too much trouble; this latest one yesterday left us with 10″-12″ of light snow to clear today before breakfast!
The clear skies and warm sun – and no evil wind blowing – made snow clearing quite pleasant! Enough that this afternoon we strolled up to the reservoir to see how full it was; it was surprisingly still very empty!
Margaret & I have seen some impressive snow since emigrating to New England … two feet on Aprils Fools day 1997 was amazing! But our friends still talk about “the blizzard of ’78” – so much snow there was nowhere to put it, Gloucester inaccessible for a week (till the army was able to clear highway 128).
Now, on the 30th anniversary, there’s an interesting article published in the Gloucester Times:
Thirty years ago, five men went to sea from Gloucester for the last time aboard the 50-foot, steel-hulled pilot boat Can Do. Rockport’s Motif No. 1, the red fish shack and one of the most painted buildings in the nation, toppled into the harbor. The raging ocean pounded the New England Lobster Co. at the end of Pigeon Cove wharf into the sea along with many nearby fishing shanties. Dozens of lobster boats were lost. A nearby house was ripped in half.
The sea, the waves of which reached heights of 30 to 40 feet with near hurricane winds, ravaged the Cape Ann coastline.
A total of 32 inches of snow fell in a period of 24 hours from Monday night throughout the next day making it the heaviest one-day snowfall in the city’s recorded history.
More and more these days, Bridgette needs to keep warm (she’s about 15 years old now). We have a heated cat bed that she sleeps in for much of the day, but she also searches for other heat sources – for example she’s figured that the hottest base board (radiator) in the house is at the bottom of the stairs (it happens to have two hot pipes running through it), and in the mornings she’ll often stand next to it with her head about as close as she can get!
But the best way to get warm is to sit in the sun – she spends much of any sunny winter morning on the corner of the bed in the guest room, where the sun shines in:
But if we’re home, she knows to ask us to open the front door so she can sit behind the glass storm door:
Eventually even she gets too hot and retreats to somewhere more shady – but this is one of her favourite places in the winter 🙂
M&I / GBMINI 