Truck Broken Down In Bourne Rotary

Hi!

Just a quick note to let you know that there is a box truck broken down in the Bourne Rotary.

It's occupying two lanes, straddling the line. It's right in front of the new Dunkin Donuts, right before where you get on to the bridge.

Cars have to wiggle around the breakdown and it is causing delays.

Winter's Last Snow? Pictures And Snowfall Totals

Cedarville

MASSACHUSETTS

...BARNSTABLE COUNTY...
   BUZZARDS BAY           2.7   930 AM  3/21  SPOTTER              
   EAST SANDWICH          1.8   500 AM  3/21  NWS EMPLOYEE          
   EAST FALMOUTH          1.5   703 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   HYANNIS                1.5   730 AM  3/21  MEDIA                
   WOODS HOLE             1.0   600 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER        
   CHATHAM                1.0   800 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER        
   CENTERVILLE            1.0   600 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   SOUTH SAGAMORE         1.0   619 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO            
   FALMOUTH               0.5   725 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO          

Aimed At Sandwich

...BRISTOL COUNTY...
   REHOBOTH               3.9   905 AM  3/21  NWS EMPLOYEE          
   NORTON                 3.6   700 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER        
   DIGHTON                3.5   928 AM  3/21  NWS EMPLOYEE          
   TAUNTON                3.5   700 AM  3/21  NWS OFFICE            
   SWANSEA                3.2   950 AM  3/21  SPOTTER              
   FALL RIVER             3.0   915 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   MANSFIELD              2.5   738 AM  3/21  TRAINED SPOTTER      
   NEW BEDFORD            2.0   511 AM  3/21  AMATEUR RADIO        
   ACUSHNET               1.8   620 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   NORTH ATLEBORO         1.7   840 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   FAIRHAVEN              1.5   625 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   WEST ACUSHNET          1.5   642 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO        

Plymouth, The White Cliffs... lol

 

...DUKES COUNTY...
   WEST TISBURY           1.3   629 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   EDGARTOWN              1.0   900 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER    

Bournedale

...NORFOLK COUNTY...
   MILLIS                 4.5   900 AM  3/21  SPOTTER              
   DOVER                  4.0   815 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   BRAINTREE              4.0   522 AM  3/21  AMATEUR RADIO        
   FOXBORO                3.2   815 AM  3/21  NWS EMPLOYEE          
   MILTON                 3.2   830 AM  3/21  BLUE HILL OBSERVATORY
   SHARON                 3.0   839 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO            
   FRANKLIN               3.0   700 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER        
   NORWOOD                2.7   736 AM  3/21  NWS EMPLOYEE          
   WALPOLE                2.6   737 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO            
   NORTH WEYMOUTH         2.5   638 AM  3/21  TRAINED SPOTTER      
   FOXBOROUGH             2.5   716 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO            
   RANDOLPH               2.5   545 AM  3/21  TRAINED SPOTTER      
   BROOKLINE              2.4   845 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO            
   WRENTHAM               2.2   811 AM  3/21  NONE                

Sagamore Heights

...PLYMOUTH COUNTY...
   WHITMAN                5.3   957 AM  3/21  TRAINED SPOTTER      
   HANOVER                5.0   534 AM  3/21  GENERAL PUBLIC        
   N. SCITUATE            4.8   657 AM  3/21  MEDIA                
   BRIDGEWATER            4.0   700 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER        
   ROCKLAND               4.0   720 AM  3/21  SPOTTER              
   WAREHAM                4.0   933 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   HINGHAM                3.6   928 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   MIDDLEBORO             3.0   700 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER        
   KINGSTON               2.5   731 AM  3/21  TRAINED SPOTTER      
   CATERVILLE             2.5   908 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   PLYMOUTH               2.0   524 AM  3/21  AMATEUR RADIO        
   DUXBURY                2.0   721 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO            
   WEST WAREHAM           2.0   745 AM  3/21  TRAINED SPOTTER      
   ROCHESTER              0.7   800 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER        

Cape Cod Canal

I'm hardcore enough that I got in 18 holes today at White Cliffs. I also golfed.

Sammich

Scusset Beach jetty

Inland Cedarville

Spring's comin'....

SE Massachusetts School Closings

SCHOOL CLOSINGS

Understand that these are just for our coverage area.

Abinton

Acushnet

Attleboro

Avon

Bishop Feehan

Blue Hills

Boston

Bourne

Braintree

Bridgewater-Raynham

Bristol-Plymouth

Brockton

Carver

Dartmouth

Dighton-Rehoboth

East Bridgewater

Easton

Fairhaven

Fall River

Freetown-Lakeville

Greater New Bedford

Hanover

Holbrook

Mashpee

Milton

New Bedford

Norton

Old Colony Tech

Old Rochester

Plymouth

Sandwich

Seekonk

Somerset-Berkley

South Shore Voc-Tech

Taunton

Upper Cape Tech

Wareham

Weymouth

West Bridgewater

Whitman-Hanson

Cardinal Spellman

Sacred Heart (Kingston)

St. John Paul II

Cape Cod Community College

Bridgewater State University

UMASS-Dartmouth

Snowstorm Update, And Late Season Snow Facts

We have two birds to kill today. We have the Sunday/Monday snowstorm, and- in the spirit of things- we have a bit of Knowledge to share regarding late-season snowstorms in Massachusetts.

The ever-changing nature of the storm means that we'll leave the discussion of the forecast until the last possible moment. It'll be more accurate this way. If that's what you came to this page for, scroll down until you see the NWS graphic.

March 19th isn't that late in our winter season. Note that I define winter as generally starting with the first snow and ending when the last one melts. March 19th is Spring, but it's early spring.

The latest I have seen snow in Massachusetts is April 28th. That was in Worcester, and we'll get to that in a moment.

I'm going to work with the village of Buzzards Bay for weather stats, because A) it's where I live, and B) it's a nice midway point for our coverage area. I'll also use Boston, as they are easier to find stats for.

Monday is not only a potential snow day. It is a special day as far as historical average temperatures go.  It is the first day where historical average high temperatures will be 50 or above, and the average low temperatures will be 32 and above. 32 degrees, as you know, is freezing. Snow needs that 32 degree benchmark for the most part. There's no law that says it can't be zero degrees tomorrow, but it is unlikely when judged by history.

April 22nd is when our historical daily high temperature gets to 60 degrees, so hang in there.

Late-season snow facts:

- According to WBZ, Boston has had snowfall of 12 inches or more after March 20th once, in 1997. More on that in a sec.  Boston has 6 instances where 6 or more inches of snow fell after March 20th. Worcester has had 12 such events.

- Spring starts at 12:30 AM this Sunday, March 20th.

- The latest measurable snowfall for Boston was a half inch on May 10th, 1977. The latest we've had non-accumulating snow in Boston was June 10th, 1955.

- This source tells me that New York and Atlanta both have the same day, in different years, for latest snowfall... April 25th.

- Most of New England had frost on August 23rd in 1816, and lake ice was seen around the Bay State into August.. This was due to the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which gave everyone red, smoky skies and drove worldwide temperatures down. New England had her corn crop fail, and all sorts of food prices skyrocketed. June snow fell in some parts of New England. It is known as The Year Without A Summer. They had one period where it went from 95 degrees to 35 degrees in a half day.

- Three late-season snowstorms stand out in our history. One was that May 10th, 1977 one from The Farmer's Almanac. The record is a bit later in the year for the Berkshires. The other late-season trace snow events of note in our history are the ones I was yapping about up above.

- Our second storm of note was the 1997 April Fool's Day Blizzard. Over 25 inches of snow fell on Boston, and coastal flooding tore apart the shoreline.

- Our third late-season storm of note was a 17-21 inch blockbuster that hit Worcester and areas north on April 28th, 1987.

I was a freshman at Worcester State College for that storm, and had just picked up a girl from West Boylston High School for a date... because that's how I rolled in 1987, playboy! We went to a movie, came out, and there were 6 inches of snow on the ground. We had an Italian dinner somewhere, and there was a foot on the ground when we came out of the restaurant.

I had only been driving for a year, and had zero savvy. We nearly hit a plow when we skidded all the way down a hill on Route 9. We also drove into a drift in some guy's yard in Berlin, Massachusetts. It ended well... the homeowner called his sons out to shove my car from the drift, and they came out single file... and each one was bigger than the last. "Don't worry about it, just steer" is how the father replied when I offered to make Katie drive so that I could get out and help shove the car. They literally lifted my car and threw it from the drift.

I got zero (0) play from that date, too. The only time I even got a hug as when we nearly crashed into the plow, and that may have been a case where she was trying to wrestle me into a position where the plow blade hit me first. I really can't blame her.

Anyhow, 17 inches of snow is about as much as we get that late in the year. If you get snow on your lawn after May 10th, you just saw a regional record.

Snowstorm Forecast Notes

As we publish when we wish, we had no need to keep updating our forecast. TV stations did not enjoy that luxury. They had to have something up every 6 hours or so, and it caused their forecasts to be all over the board.

Here are a few WBZ updates, just to show you how they flail about in the wind.

- March 13th... "Winter Is Over"

- March 16th... "Storm coming, worst of it west of 128"

- March 17th... "Danielle Niles tries to avoid giving a forecast for a March 20th storm on March 17th," although they do have the beginnings of a cool March Madness "Worst Storm Eva" bracket. I see a Blizzard of '78/1991 Halloween Gale final, although they forgot to put in the worst storm we have had in modern history, the 1938 Great New England Hurricane.

- March 17th, 6 hours later, different forecaster... "6-12 inches"

- March 18th, 12 hours later... "2 to 4 inches"

- March 19th, noon... "Storm will not form until it is past us, little or no snow"

- March 19th, 11 PM... "8 inches"

It's 2 AM on the 20th, and I can not finish this section yet... I have no idea what they will be putting in their 5 AM and noon updates. They may be calling for a heat wave or a hurricane for all I can tell.

(Update) 7 AM, today... possible "mammoth amounts" Their snow/rain line only touches the Islands and Chatham.

Our own March Madness brackets for Worst Massachusetts Storm Ever, Top 16 Seeds:

1) 1938 Great New England Hurricane

2) 1635 Great Colonial Hurricane

3) Blizzard of '78

4) Hurricane Bob, 1991

5) Worcester Tornado, 1953

6) Halloween Gale, 1991

7) Blizzard of 1888

8) 1898 Portland Gale

9) April Fool's Blizzard, 1997

10) Hurricane Carol/Edna, 1954

11)  Hurricane Donna, 1960

12) The Great September Gale Of 1815

13)  Winter of 2015

14) 1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane

15) The Triple Storms of 1839

16) Blizzard of 2005

Honorable Mention/Lower Seeds:

2008 Ice Storm

1698, reported 42 inches of snow in Cambridge

1831 Snowstorm, 3 feet on the Cape

1978 pre-Blizzard January snowstorm

2011 Springfield Tornado

Blizzard of 2013

1993 Superstorm

Saxby Gale, 1869

1969 100 Hour Storm

Winter of 1717

1996 South Shore microburst

Hurricane Belle

Hurricane Gloria

Hurricane Irene

Hurricane Sandy/Post-Sandy Wareham microburst

1960 snowstorm

Our Forecast For Sunday/Monday's Entertainment Along The Coast:

There is a Winter Storm Warning for Plymouth County. Barnstable County only has a Winter Storm Watch..

As of this AM, it looks like the worst of it will fall along the Cape Cod Canal area through Hull or so..

Accuweather, which has also held to a consistent forecast, gives the village of Buzzards Bay 5-10 inches, and they settle on 5.3 inches if you add up their projected daily totals.  I added up Duxbury as well, and they get 5.1". A lot of it hinges on where the heavier snow bands set up.

(3:45 PM Update... 7 inches now forecast for Buzzards Bay by Accuweather)

I'm thinking that the Outer to Mid Cape gets 1-3 inches. The Upper Cape gets 3-6". The South Shore, South Coast and Rhode Island get in the 5-10" range. Middlesex and Cape Ann go to the 3-6" range, and Worcester is the drop-off point where you start clocking 1-3" again.

So, all of Plymouth, Bristol and Norfolk Counties get to share this one. Note that this current track cements a winter total where Cape Cod (or at least the Upper Cape) had more snow than Boston did. There is a very good chance that schools in this area will be cancelled tomorrow. You can blame that Al Nino motherf***er.

Winds should be gusty at the coast. It could be worse. The wobble in the track that gave the South Shore the higher snow also draws the worst of the winds back out into the ocean. An approaching full moon is happening, but we foresee nothing worse than some splashover. There's an 11 AM high tide on Monday that we'll watch for you... we might go to Sandwich for it.

The timing of the storm should be 6-9 PM Sunday through about Monday afternoon. Don't be shocked if you see some rain when it starts, or if the snow doesn't really drop until midnight.

The long-range forecast shows no more snow for this season, and it also seems to say that this weekend will be the last of the below-freezing weather. We'll be at 50 degrees on Wednesday.

Check Your Irish

A few notes on the reach of the Irish Riviera....

- Before doing any demographic research, I went to various Facebook pages on the Cape and South Coast, seeing if the people there felt that they should be included in the Irish Riviera.

The Cape people feel that they are a whole other entity. They are correct, IMHO. Cape Cod is actually the New England Riviera. They draw people from all over, where the visitors on the South Shore have a bit more Paddy to them.

No one from the South Coast even replied, to my knowledge.

- As you can see, the heart of the Riviera runs from Hull to Duxbury, with a sizable inland area running to the Bridgewaters. Brockton is a lighter green, but still Irish enough to represent hard.

- You could make an argument about running the Irish Riviera from Plymouth through Bourne down to Falmouth, and maybe hooking it through parts of Sandwich, Barnstable and Mashpee.

- Other than those lonely white dots, you can pretty much roll from the tip of Cape Cod to Worcester on a sea of green.

- Sharon,  a big lonely dot of white in a sea of green in the middle, only has 12% Irish. 14% of their population, and their biggest group by ancestry, is Russian.

- The North Shore has a bit of an inland Riviera going, but it's a B- to the South Shore's 4.0. Her anchorman is North Reading.

- It gets very Latino when you get north and east of Boston. East Boston is 54% Latino.

- The more Irish parts of Cape Cod are about as Irish as the less Irish parts of the South Shore.

- Fairhaven (27% Portuguese), Westport (30% Portagee, 14% French), Dartmouth (37% Portagee), Fall River (44% Portagee) and New Bedford (37% Portuguese, and they have more Sub-Saharan Africans at 8% than Irish at 7%) establish a firm roadblock in front of the Irish Riviera's reach onto the South Coast.

- Onset and East Wareham have the most Micks on the South Coast. while the Popponessett section of the Cape bleeds the greenest. A run from Pop through Hyannis sometimes gets Irish Riviera votes, mostly because of the Kennedys.

- Wellfleet on the Cape and the whole South Coast west of Mattaspoisett need to import some Irish, pronto.

- Even a first grader can look at this map and tell you where everyone fled Southie and JP for when busing started.

- A girl I worked with at AOL is from eastern Massachusetts, and has 4 sisters. Each of them has dated someone named "Murph." Not the same Murph, either.

- You kind of have to squint at it to see it on that map, but Southie is still pretty friggin' Irish. You won't have trouble finding some Irish Spring in Charlestown, either.

- Butter-soft Duxbury is more Irish than any bad-ass part of Boston where Whitey Bulger ever stalked, or at least since busing hit. I don't see any mob movies coming our way, however... although we did have a rapper get shot in town, so there's progress being made.

- Rhode Island is 19% Irish. They are America's most Portuguese state, and also have a pile of Eye-tal-ians.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Nor'easter Incoming For Sunday/Monday?

Winter wasn't going to let us off the hook without one more backhand slap. Did you really think it would?

We've had a mild winter, a welcome change after all that Siberia stuff we had a year ago. Cape Cod may have gotten a bit more than her average for snowfall, but a winter where Cape Cod outsnows Boston is an anomaly.

We have a shot at some more snow this Monday, as a storm will develop offshore and see how close she can get to New England. She'll arrive during what may be our last blast of cold weather this weekend.

She could very well miss us. We're several days away. It is one of those two-track scenarios where Track #1 means that the storm goes out to sea, and Track #2 means that we get a rain/wind/snow event.

There's a full moon on Wednesday, and that could provide some Aftersurf if the storm throws waves at us from afar (she's expected to hit Canada as a blizzard), especially Tuesday.

We're too far away to say for sure what will happen, and even if we guess, we have no idea of how much snow will fall, where the rain/snow line would set up and a zillion other things.

I saw no snow totals forecast. I did see wind gust charts giving us gale-force winds. The storm would clip Massachusetts, and mainly be a SE Massachusetts event.

If it hits, the weather would go downhill Sunday night. The storm would be offshore on Monday, and be done with us by Monday night.

Again, it may miss us, most likely will... we just want you to keep an eye on the weather for the next few days. We'll keep you updated.

Ocean State Job Lot Opens In Wareham

East Wareham was down, but they were never out. 

Things looked bad for the east side of the 'Ham when Wal-Mart left the Cranberry Plaza. Coming on the heels of Staples hauling up stakes a few years ago, it looked like a deathblow for a whole section of town. Wally was the engine that drove the local economy.

More than one local who I chatted with mentioned how leisurely it was to drive on the Cranberry Highway since Wally moved along. It used to be awful, and you were taking your life in your hands any time you tried to cross it... especially on foot.

It's tough to replace Wally. You don't do it with just one store it seems, as two stores have rushed in to fill the void created by the Drang nach Westen of Walter Mart. Cardi's (of Wareham) is coming soon, and the Ocean State Job Lot just opened.

Coming soon... Cardi's!

So, with Wally just down the road a bit, and two new stores setting up shop in Wally former nest, what's not to like?

I do worry some about the Buzzards Bay version of the Ocean State Job Lot, as I can't imagine that the demand for OSJL's particular inventory can support two stores within a mile or two of each other... but I also do this for a living, so what the Hell do I know?

 Locals recall that Buzzards Bay once had a Burger King, but that it moved down into Wareham. Dunkin' filled the void, and would be the leading candidate to shift into the OSJL's Buzzards Bay location if they decided to just host one store in the area. I can see Dunkin' wanting very badly to be posted up on the Belmont Circle rotary.

But that's putting the cart in front of the horse. For now, we picked up some new jobs, we filled an ugly gap in a crucial local marketplace, and we'll see how things shake out from there.

This sort of kills my plans to write about the abandoned Wal-Mart being used to house and supply UN troops (Chinese and North Korean), who are being based here for when the one-world government comes to confiscate our guns.

I was going to get my friend Tristan to pose outside the abandoned Wal-Mart in a homemade UN jacket as a sneaky-looking North Korean occupier. He's of Japanese descent, but he'd pass in a pinch.

Now, I'll never get on Infowars.com. Maybe I can get a Jew or a Freemason poisoning a well.

I want the ship clock up there for a blank spot on my office wall....

... as well as this thing to pick cookie sheets up with that looks like Cookie Monster somehow got a baby up in Kermit T. Frog.