Slush Cup and Freeze

The Walk to Work

It seems that the only thing I can write about is the weather. Actually that isn’t quite true. I had a whole other post written, but I left it at my office on my flash drive, so until I can retrieve that and finish it, I’ll talk about the weather again.
The Boston Globe reported this morning that since December 1, Boston has had 49 inches of snow. The usual total for this time of the year is 22 inches, and the normal snowfall for the entire winter is 44inches. In addition the temperature has been well below normal as well so much of that snow is still with us in the form of mounds of frozen snow and ice along curbs and sidewalk where has been deposited while shoveling in the preceding weeks. What a mess!

So we got another snowstorm yesterday. We knew it was coming so most of the schools in the state cancelled classes for the day, and it was a good thing that they, because by late in the afternoon; the city was a mess, but I get ahead of myself.

The snow didn’t start falling until late morning, when I left for work there was perhaps an inch on the ground, but it was falling at heavy rate, and by the time I got off the subway on the other side, there were about 3 inches on the ground. Some time mid-day, the snow began to change to sleet, and then later to rain, although it was still falling at the same rate. By the time I left work, there was 4 inches of snowy slush on the ground. Where the walks have been shoveled there was a thin layer of ice from the sleet, now with a thin layer of water over the top. The only thing more slippery than ice is ice with a film of water over it: treacherous! All this rain and melting snow flowed to the storm drains that quickly backed up, causing it all to collect at corners and in some cases pool across the street. The slog home was slow and rather uncomfortable alternately trying to keep from falling on the ice and avoiding pools of cold slushy water. I was mostly successful in the former, only falling once, the latter not so much so, more that once stepping on what appeared to be solid snow only to be camouflaging several inches of water below the top layer. By the time I got home my pants were wet halfway to my knees and my face was a raw from the sleet and rain.

On a side note, one of the joys of wearing glasses is stepping from the cold outdoors in the warmth of the subways stations to have my glasses fog up within seconds of entering the station making me blind as I step on the escalator. It is a dangerous but exciting life.

I got home changed out of my wet boot s ands pants and got myself warm on the outside and in then on the inside with a little of the ‘red stuff’ we concoct every year. I then suited up in my rain pants and golashes and went back out to shovel slush from walks and from the car. That was more a matter of getting the water to flow off the sidewalks and into the street, carving channels through the mounds of frozen snow along the sidewalks.

I woke early to the morning to the sound of tires spinning on ice while trying to get up the hill in front of the house. The rain had stopped some time in the night, and of course everything froze. There was a thin glaze of ice on the streets; the sidewalks that had been shoveled were slick with a layer of ice the ones that hadn’t been shoveled were impassable. I got out early and salted our walks; I have gone through nearly 100 lbs of salt this year nearly double what I use in a normal year, and it is only January. If this weather keeps up, I may pass 200lbs.

The trek to work was not as painful as the trip home, but it was even more treacherous, with every surface covered with a layer of ice. It was safest to walk in the middle of the street where the trucks had salted, but that presenting a different hazard of having to dodge cars, which were also traveling on the still slippery roads. By the time I got to work my legs were cramped for having to ‘Penguin walk’ almost all the way to and from the subway.

And we moved from Michigan for this?