Dave’s Photo Blog

Although I blog about local stories, I do have readers from well beyond Massachusetts. Those of you in Massachusetts know what I’m going to say here. We’ve had a lot of snow this January. But for those of you that don’t get to experience this on a regular basis, I thought I’d share a few photographs of what a lot of snow looks like after it’s been shoveled out of the average suburban backyard and run down a few of the caveats of life in a snowy winter.

It’s Monday today. Starting late Saturday night, we got a little snow storm. OK, maybe more than a little. It snowed until mid-afternoon on Sunday. Maybe a foot of snow. Mind you, there was already snow on the ground from previous storms so we weren’t starting from scratch here. Anyway, we were supposed to get a ‘dusting’ of snow overnight on Sunday. That dusting turned out to be more like about 7 inches of snow.

So here is my car out behind my apartment (which is in a two-family home). You will note that it is pointed at a snowbank that is taller than the car itself. There is actually a regular old chain-link fence buried somewhere in that mess that separates my backyard from that of the building behind it. The snow bank started out as a pile of snow against the fence, but it now has an almost vertical face. You can’t throw any more snow on top or it will either run down the front-side (meaning you have to shovel it again) or the backside (on the other side of the fence – not very nice to do to the people who use that lot).

Now I must tell you in all fairness that I absolutely love the snow. I really do. Even though it’s a pain to shovel it. You know you are having a good snow year when it starts to get hard to figure out where to put it when you do shovel. We have just reached that point here in Arlington. There is a grass strip on one side of the house. My neighbors and I both throw the snow into that strip. The problem is that the backyard of my apartment is paved for multiple cars and there is a lot of snow to clear. Most of it winds up being thrown over at the grass strip. As you can see, there is now a huge snowbank blocking that area from any further snow. It’s too high to throw snow over – even a snow thrower is problematic.

For a scale indicator, check out both the size of the doorway and the bench on the porch (which has three steps up from ground level).

Here’s another angle. You can see that the pile is actually bigger on the back than on the front because, well, the snow has to go over the top. Also, the neighbor’s driveway is between the two houses and he throws his snow in there too.

Unfortunately, the snow thrower that my landlord used broke down on Sunday. It’s irreparably damaged. Another aspect of living in New England is that by the time you’ve had a few storms like this, you cannot just buy a snow thrower – they sell out for the season. So it looks like I’ll be doing a lot of shoveling this winter.