My fellow New Englanders should feel a twinge of recognition looking at these pictures of cars trapped in the drifting snow on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive during the storm on Tuesday.

Nobody here got trapped on the highway this time around, as far as I know, but instead people are having to contend with collapsing roofs from too much snow. The town where we live now has the rather dubious distinction of having received the most snow in the state for the last TWO storms. Yay us. Poor Charlotte is going to be going to school until July at this rate.

Thankfully our snowblower came back from the shop a few days ago. It’s gonna take this guy FOREVER to clean up his driveway:

I asked for the snow fairy to come and clean up my driveway, but THIS wasn’t what I had in mind:

It’s getting so bad that the trees are giving up and moving to Florida:

According to the local meteorologists, we’ve got about 17 inches of snow in our neck of the woods, but some places already have as much as two feet:

Proof positive that we Massholes simply can’t live without a daily dose of Dunkies:

The snow is so deep in places that we don’t even know where things are any more:

The saddest person in New England right now:

(ironically, he’s also a Minnesota Vikings fan)

Meanwhile, at an undisclosed location, Dick Cheney is livin’ it up in retirement:

Somehow, our little sliver of North America has been escaping the massive snowfalls that have buried the entire Midwest and even Europe these last couple of weeks, but yesterday the snowstorm we missed over the weekend gave a little back-kick and reminded us that we’re not immune. It only amounted to a couple of inches, which is negligible by our traditional standards, but because the weather people hadn’t anticipated it, nobody was prepared and the evening commute was a right bitch for most people. There was just enough snow that it needed to be cleared from our driveway, but not enough to start the snowblower, so I shoveled. It’s funny how much longer the driveway seems when you hold a shovel in your hand.

The snowstorm also screwed us out of the chance to see the total lunar eclipse last night. Not that I had the slightest intention of staying up until 2:30 in the morning to see it in the first place. If any of us are still alive in 2094, they say that’s the next time we’ll have the chance to see one on the same day as the Winter Solstice. Here’s one blogger I ran across who DID get to see it and took a couple of fuzzy pictures.

It could be worse. Here’s a picture of some people taking a hike in the snow IN AUSTRALIA WHERE IT IS THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER:

Now the question for us is whether there’s going to be another snowstorm over the weekend. Our Christmas weekend includes driving up to Maine to see our families, but the “Storm Of The Decade” currently washing away all of California could bring all of its moisture with it as it travels eastward due to an air current sometimes called the “Pineapple Express”. Given that the local meteorologists screwed the pooch a little with this storm, they are decidedly non-committal about what might happen over the weekend, saying there’s a 60% chance of a storm somewhere on the East Coast. Thanks, fellas, that clears up everything.

Now that we do have snow on the ground here, I’d just like to remind all my fellow Massholes that you need to clean the effing snow off of the roof of your car before you get out on the road and kill somebody.

Seems like it’s one of those winters where we’re going to get a big snowstorm pretty much every weekend. We got lucky over Christmas weekend that the temps got warm enough to make it rain instead, washing away all of the previous weekend’s snow in the process, but the three-day snow event that started New Year’s Day left about a foot of snow in our yard (which I guess is about half of what my friends and family in Maine wound up with), and Harvey the Weather Guy says there’s another storm headed our way this coming weekend.

So, like me, maybe you’re a little sick and tired of snow already, but if you’re one of those insane people who just LOOOOOOOOOVE snow or live someplace where you don’t get whalloped by it on a regular basis, you might get a kick out of this site, which lets you create your very own unique and special snowflake.

While we’ve all been riding the rollercoaster of March weather, it seems that the one who has taken it the hardest around here has been HarryHarryHarry. Now that both of our cats are getting a little long in the tooth, their resiliency in the face of unpleasant weather has ratcheted down a notch or two. Maynard, who is two years older than Harry, and officially a feline senior citizen, took one look at our very first snowfall, said “fuck that bullshit” and has spent the winter pretending that the outside world doesn’t exist. But Maynard has never needed outside time the way Harry does.

Harry was simply born to be an outdoor cat. Letting him spend time outdoors was a life-changing experience for him and for us. It’s been his fortune and ours that most of the last several winters have been below-average in snow accumulation, so that going out during the winter months was easily done except in the coldest times. Even Maynard was usually willing to spend a little time outdoors if the ground was bare. But this winter has given us well over the average snowfall, with lots of cold weather and little melting between storms. That is, until the last week or two, as the tendrils of spring have started spreading into our corner of North America. At some point in February, Harry’s overwhelming need to go outdoors finally bested his intense dislike of walking in the snow, and he had resumed taking his morning constitutional every day after eating his breakfast, for which he was rewarded with enough days with temperatures above 40 that the snow was mostly gone.

Then we got pummeled with that snowstorm over the first weekend of March that covered the whole eastern half of the country. When he meowed for the door that Monday morning, I knew it was going to come as a rude shock to Harry. It was a rude shock to everyone, but at least most people had been a little prepared by the endless panic-mongering of the weather reports. Harry doesn’t pay attention to weather reports. So I went with him to the back door and swung it open for him.

His whole furry orange body froze with shock and then visibly slumped with dismay. The snow on the steps was so deep and so fluffy that the one step he took sank him up to his shoulder. He thought about it for a long time, stepping backward and forward and not finding any spot where he would not sink, then turned to the doorjamb and scratched the side (even though he has no front claws), which is his signal that he has changed his mind about the whole thing and really only wanted a stretch in the first place.

The temperature rebounded quickly after that storm, and by last weekend we were once again flirting with 60-degree temperatures and bare ground, so he didn’t let himself be too defeated and was once again going outside of his own volition, if a bit grudgingly. Maynard even decided that it was enough like spring that he could risk it. Then on Monday, three inches of gloppy wet snow. Those of us who have lived here a long time will tell you that this is SOP for March — a meteorological schizophrenia with occasional psychosis, but we know that the outcome is weighted in favor of spring. I didn’t even bother to clear the snow from the back steps on Monday, knowing that it would be gone in a day or two. But I think Harry took it personally when he asked to be let outdoors and the wet white glop was back again.

And now another weekend is upon us, and for the third straight in a row, we’ve got bare ground and moderating temperatures. Harry has even gone outside TWICE today, probably thinking that he’d better get it in before he gets snowed on again. I don’t blame him, but I also can’t say with 100% certainty that this time he’s wrong, even though the forecast is in our favor. Only Monday morning will tell him for sure.

And this is why:

An online acquaintance from “The Site Which Shall Not Be Named” shared these pictures with us this morning. He lives just up the highway from me in Southern New Hampshire, and this is his wife’s car AFTER a big chunk of ice came flying off the top of a tractor trailer and smashed into her windshield. Fortunately, she was not hurt, but, as you can see, she was mere inches from death.

Cleaning your car, truck, or other road vehicle is not just for your own degree of visibility, it is for the safety of other drivers who must share the road with you, often under less-than-ideal weather conditions in the winter. It is nowhere near okay to only do the windshields, or, as I have seen, simply make a tiny hole in front to look through. Clean off the roof, trunk AND hood to prevent chunks of snow or ice from blowing off and striking other vehicles. Professional truck drivers especially need to pay attention to their trailers — this woman nearly paid for someone else’s lack of attention with her life.