The blood of his friends was gone beneath snow

[sovay]

In recent years, I feel we have been promised many blizzards, snowpocalypses, and Fimbulvetrs that never quite made the grade: blew out to sea, slumped off into freezing rain, deposited an entirely normal amount of snow for a New England winter storm and moved on with their lives. Especially as the forecasts and warnings threw around (admittedly delightful) meteorological buzzwords like "bombogenesis," I was prepared for snow, but not lots of it.

It was snowing last night as we watched Here We Go Again (1942). It was snowing last night as we watched Zazie dans le métro (1960). It was snowing last night as we went to bed and I read Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair (1948). Sometimes it was snowing vertically. It looked very impressive, sleeting sideways by in the sodium streetlight. It was snowing when we woke up.

This isn't the second coming of the Blizzard of '78, but there's a respectable two feet of snow in the drifts down there and I foresee lots of shoveling in my future. I can live with that.

Comments

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

My father, who has been professionally intertwined with various Boston infrastructural agencies for 40something years now, says that the weeklong citywide shutdown occasioned by the Blizzard of '78 can literally never happen again. The art and science of emergency management has progressed too far.

I showed him the Pratchett quote about wearing wet copper armor and shouting ALL GODS ARE BASTARDS and suggested that he might not want to tempt fate. :)

[sovay]

My father, who has been professionally intertwined with various Boston infrastructural agencies for 40something years now, says that the weeklong citywide shutdown occasioned by the Blizzard of '78 can literally never happen again.

I just meant in terms of inches of snowfall, but that's interesting to know. (What kind of work does your father do?) I agree with your wariness, of course.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

The thing with '78 was that it was the second (or third) of a bunch of big storms in a row, so not only was it 27 inches, it came on top of a whole bunch more. (And, of course, Route 128.)

But however, per Wunderground, the airport had 20 inches as of 1pm, so we may still get kinda close to 25-26 inches. (Edit: And y'all in Somerville have 27, it would seem.)

[sovay]

The thing with '78 was that it was the second (or third) of a bunch of big storms in a row, so not only was it 27 inches, it came on top of a whole bunch more.

This is what my parents' stories tell me. (They moved up from Philadelphia just in time for '78. My aunt was also living in Boston at the time. Later that year she moved to southern California, where she has remained ever since.)

(Edit: And y'all in Somerville have 27, it would seem.)

Thanks! I was just wondering.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

Sorry for not answering before, I have been offline a lot.

Dad's an economic/transit development guy. He worked up at the State House during the Dukakis administration and worked with MassPort after that (being deliberately vague here as I don't have his OK to talk about his work). More recently, he's worked in the private sector, at a company that creates/improves public transportation in various cities.

tl;dr: I come by my obsession with the urban-worldbuilding facet of urban fantasy very honestly. :)