Snowpocalypse!

So we had a wee bit of snow this weekend! It was the worst I have seen since moving to Connecticut almost 17 years ago. This storm, called Nemo taught me a lot;

Be Prepared, Not Scared! Okay I stole that mantra off weather man Matt Scott, but those are words to live by! Over the years I have come to the conclusion most weather men like to hype things up and give the worst case scenario in the scariest of tones, but lately I have been following Matt on Facebook and I like his “give the facts not the drama” forecasts, so when he said it was going to be big, I listened. I went to the store and made sure we were well stocked with food and wine.

I learned being housebound can be fun. As the snow came down thick and fast Friday night, some neighbors came over and I made a pot of chili and we played board games. Usually on a Friday night we are all off doing something different but we had no choice but to spend time with each other. Actually the kids could have disappeared into their rooms with their laptops and phones but they chose not to.

I learned that sometimes my husband thinks he knows better than me. All Saturday morning he was out shoveling the driveway and I told him once it was shoveled loose we could snow blow it but he was convinced it was too heavy. Once I finished procrastinating in the house I went out and cranked up the snow blower…and what do you know it worked! (He learned that I have patience…..it took me all afternoon to say “I told you!”)

I was sad to learn that some people didn’t realize that living in Connecticut means you will have big snow storms once in a while. There were a lot of complaints on Facebook; the depth of the snow, it was taking too long for their street to be dug out, they were running out of supplies….the list goes on.

The flip side of that was seeing how resourceful people were being; my friend Kasey  lives in East Haven and her street still had not been cleared by Sunday afternoon. Her boyfriend is a volunteer fire fighter/EMT so when he came home from volunteering at the firehouse, he and the rest of the neighbors got to work
snow blowing the street.

Soon the positive stories outnumbered the whiners. Our street was still blocked with snow Sunday afternoon, my neighbor decided to walk down to Cumberland Farms and get supplies. She and her son set off, pulling a sled behind them. As they got to the bottom of our street, a neighbor Steve loaned them his four wheel drive vehicle so they wouldn’t have to risk walking along route 80.

Growing up in a farming community I have always known farmers were hardworking and selfless; so I was not surprised when I heard our local farmers were out in their tractors and payloaders helping the town plows. I don’t know all of them by name but Al and Nate Rose were out there. We had an awesome young guy in a yellow John Deere clear our street Sunday afternoon; he even moved the snow from the top of our driveway.

Everyone that knows me knows I hate snow and this storm has not changed my mind. However, I am not going to complain about it, I live on New England “snow happens!”