boston winter 2015: it snowed a lot.

snopocalypse? snowmaggedon?

Jan 27 2015 snow
Jan 27 2015 snow

Here in Boston, it didn’t snow at all the last few months, and then suddenly it snowed a lot (90” over the last 30 days).

Here are some sweet graphs from http://weather.ou.edu/~splillo/misc.html

http://weather.ou.edu/~splillo/misc.html Samuel Lillo
Source: http://weather.ou.edu/~splillo/misc.html Samuel Lillo
BOS30snowp
Source: http://weather.ou.edu/~splillo/misc.html Samuel Lillo

On the plus side, I’ve now met my neighbors (since they’re outside shoveling for hours). At this point, we just throw the snow up as high as we can onto piles of snow. There’s nowhere to shovel to snow to…

20150211_030924
when the snowbanks are higher than you, where do you shovel snow to?

I’ve also made new friends and spent quality time with my roommates. We all co-work, since everyone is working from home because our city cannot handle the snow. *

20150209_185702

* I come from Georgia. My Boston friends were laughing last year about Atlanta shutting down due to a few inches of snow. WHO’S LAUGHING NOW HUH? 😛 My Alaskan friends tell me our Boston snowfall is normal for them, but their cities are built to handle it.

Here is a large icicle.

20150210_151307

It later fell and broke the railing/steps on our side-access porch. o__o Apparently, falling icicles do kill people. I’m glad no one died from our icicles.

Here are some more pictures of my poor bike. <3 bike, I will spend $$ and give you a professional tune-up after winter is over.

20150215_004425

Biking in boston is a struggle right now. The major streets are passable, but all the bike racks are very buried. For instance, at wework south station, they admonished me for locking to the railing I didn’t need to step in chest-high snow to reach. To add insult to injury, when I got out of work the railing was blocked anyway by trash bags. :/

bike at work on top of bike racks
bike at work on top of bike racks that are buried in snow

Here is my bike after the valentine’s weekend snowstorm. i left it overnight on top of a snowpile in order to lock it to something. When I left, I had a “where did I lock up?” moment. It was well-camouflaged.

20150216_202551

here are some pictures from my friends

mt. albany street snow farm

mt. mit, mt. simmons, mt. albany
back when it was “just” 3.5 stories tall.

mt. mit, mt. simmons, mt. albany, mt. cambridge, who knows

view from the top
view from the top

miters

There were some silly snow vehicles: fansled aka meloncraft, ebike-ski, and scooter-ski

For technical details / build reports, see

around the web

our mayor is flummoxed

Walsh: “I don’t know what to say to anybody anymore. Hopefully it will stop eventually”

Turns out the National Weather Service meteorologists are humans and not computers

“NEXT CHANCE OF WARMTH: SOMETIME SPRING INTO SUMMER:

Source: https://twitter.com/stannenb/status/566975835316690947/photo/1
Source: https://twitter.com/stannenb/status/566975835316690947/photo/1

“SADLY JUST CONTINUED EXCEPTIONALLY COLD WEATHER … NO END APPEARS IN SIGHT”

Source: https://twitter.com/BostInnoCity/status/567379898059485184
Source: https://twitter.com/BostInnoCity/status/567379898059485184

(i wonder why they have ellipses… AND ALL CAPS… is it for maritime radio, which I’ve now spent hours listening to … for their text-to-speech synthesizer… trivia, maritime radio weather reports have three voices since 2002… here are some voice samples via NOAA “Voice Improvement Processor” … listening to it brings up salty memories for me)

weather is happening

https://www.facebook.com/weatherishappening
https://www.facebook.com/weatherishappening

He just appeared on WMBR too. http://wmbr.org/m3u/Brainworms_Radio_20150213_1900.m3u at 24 mins in. If you want your daily dose of Angry Boston Weather Preacher Dude.

train through snow

https://vine.co/v/OP9YFebzX27

everyday i’m shovelling

MBTA quick reference map

Source: https://twitter.com/SaraMorrison/status/567111295552335873/photo/1
Source: https://twitter.com/SaraMorrison/status/567111295552335873/photo/1

Note: I dug out some of this from https://twitter.com/hashtag/BOSnow

highway signs with a boston accent

Source: 5wcvb ABS news? http://www.plengegen.com/blog/genetic-forecasting-cell-biology-experimentally-validates-functional-mutations-complex-disease-sequencing-studies/
Source: 5wcvb ABS news?

build a snow igloo, then rent it out on airbnb?

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/5195545

Screenshot from 2015-02-17 00:54:51

PSA: Be careful. Turns out collapsing snow caves can kill you by asphyxiation. This happens when snow plows don’t realize it’s a snow cave instead of a snow bank and dump tons of snow on top of your cave. Then you die. So make sure to stick a flag with a picture of a human on top of your snow cave, and don’t make it on the side of the street.

weather forecasts

predicting the future is hard. here are some good websites to help you

howmuchwillitsnow.com

howmuchwillitsnow.com
howmuchwillitsnow.com

wunderground.com (great UI, graphs temperature forecast for you and you can hover over it for instance to check out the likelihood it will be raining at 1pm on Tuesday)

wunderground.com
wunderground.com

Add Media

weather.gov (links to the national weather forecast broadcasts)

Screenshot from 2015-02-16 23:37:42

sailing.mit.edu/weather/ (comes with webcams! very clean and detailed)

sailing.mit.edu/weather
sailing.mit.edu/weather

weatherishappening.com (if you like a dose of snarky with your forecast)

weatherishappening.com SNOBLOBS
weatherishappening.com
SNOBLOBS

here is a narwhal on a narwhal

to end on a happier note, here is some cuteness for you

narwhals on narwhals
narwhals on narwhals