The storm news came to me, like most people it was background news. Yesterday we saw the snow start to fall and after I left work around 2:00P.M. the wife and I stopped by the Milford mall for some last minute shopping. When we arrived the shop owners already started clearing out, and after getting some lunch at the food court I was instructed by my server that the Mall was ordered closed at 5 P.M. due to the coming snow storm.
The wife and I called Stop and Shop and we headed there since they were still open, and we did some last minute shopping to shore up our supplies in the event the power went out. Fortunately, and as of today there were no reports of any power losses from my friends and family who live in different parts of town.
We returned home, and like most people I clutched the remote control and tuned into the local weather stations to get a fix on the coming storm. By all accounts the prevailing theme was that we would have about 12-24 Inches of snow. For the most part this seemed manageable and like some of my neighbors I started shoveling snow early.
The next day when I woke up, to my amazement my entire neighborhood was buried in snow right up to the top of the mailboxes. We had over Three feet of snow, far more than what the weather channels predicted. While I hear several comments all the time about the weather I usually side with those predictions that call for rain only to deliver sunshine with a passing cloud. This time they were way off, overly conservative in their predictions and after recruiting my neighbor to help bail me out I now have snow banks in my driveway that are about Seven feet high.
Thankfully, and I do feel lucky, I had a good friend with a terrific snow blower, and after several hours of hard work I was able to finally leave my driveway. This was shortly after the Governors Driving ban was lifted at around 4:00P.M. today. What I saw while driving around town was an amazing disaster! There were big rig trucks stuck on I95, people walking all over the streets, cars stuck in snow banks that were abandoned, countless homes buried in deep snow and many town roads that were still un-plowed.
On wheelers Farms Rd. I watched a Four Wheel Drive Ford Truck with a plow on it attempt to push a snow bank out of a residential driveway. The snow was deep and thick from the City plow piling snow in front of the driveway and this high horsepower truck stopped dead in its tracks as its wheels spun hopelessly. The job of clearing these homes was getting done, but from what I saw it was among the most challenging endeavors our Plowsmen have come across in a long time. There were, and still are many residents out there who are holding these liberating Plowsmen as the bringers of freedom.
My travels were short, I actually got stuck myself on Cherry Street tonight for a few short minutes, and that was an experience that convinced me I did enough sightseeing for the evening. So I headed home and connected to Facebook. There I saw some of the most historic and amazing photos posted by my friends. I soon learned from news links that CT got hit the hardest in the entire affected area. Milford was the record setting town for snowfall in CT at 38 Inches of snow!
Seems like after two terrible deluges and windstorms in the past 18 Months, Milford now has the honor of adding this latest weather anomaly to its list of challenges. Part of me is starting to think that mother nature is mad at us or something, however I know that is not the case and this is really more about being in the wrong place at the right time.
Today's blog is to immortalize this latest record snowfall, because I do not think we will ever see this much snow drop all once in a very long time. So I included a picture that was made available on FB that best captures what I saw. I would also love to hear any of your experiences and frustrations with Milford's emergency preparedness and your thoughts on the coming weeks forecast predicting more snowfall mid-week.
Photo of the Seven Seas in Milford, CT
