Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Snow Report 1: 2013-14 season

We've had a bit of snow recently. Two Sundays ago a little more than an inch fell. It was heavy and wet and when the temperatures climbed last Monday, most of it melted away before it got below freezing since then.

Saturday night, we got a good one. Probably close to eight inches, but this one was a little different than the 17 snows of 2012-13. It was also wet and heavy, almost sleety, not fluffy at all. The temps were right around that magic level between snow-ice-rain. In fact, on Sunday it was just above freezing so the wet snow kind of settled and packed before we could get too much of it cleared away from the region.

So when it turned sharply cold Monday, that snowy mess became crusty and icy. So now in most of the area we have a strange crunch of snow-crust.

Last night, driving home late, the pack looked really weird... it appeared to have the consistency you may have seen in low-budget concrete, like the walls of a municipal swimming pool. Kind of plastic-y. I've never seen anything like it. The street lights bouncing off this odd texture gave it a waxy, artificial sheen. It's kind of ugly.

We won't have to look at if for long, though, because today we've got a new layer coming down. It started a couple of hours ago and is expected to continue into mid-evening, dropping up to five or six inches of fresh powder. This snow looks fluffy and light, although driving around a bit ago, it hit the windshield as small pellets. Seems this year's theme so far is Schizo-Snow.

It is probably going to cause some problems, because the pre-existing PlastiSnow is ice-encrusted. Friday through Sunday, temperatures are forecast in the mid-40s, with some rain. If that happens, it might cut this slop down a bit. But tonight it could be a mess.

This has been Snow Report 1 for the 2013-14 Boston winter.