Fun Snow Facts For The Whole Famn Damily

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New England is one of those cold places. We get a bit spoiled in Cranberry County, as our lows aren't as low as they get further inland. We're actually the balmy part of New England, which- as good as it sounds- means that we are currently 29 degrees when inland locations are 26 degrees. I doubt that this is of any great comfort to you.

New Englanders are logical, and we'd be quick to point out to someone who is suffering in our climate that many parts of America have it worse than we do with Old Man Winter. Everything from the Great Lakes west to the Rockies along our latitude is colder than we are, as our climate is influenced by the Gulf Stream. As cold as our air is right now, there is a touch of Florida to it that is saving us from the true Ice Bowl stuff.

Still, New Englanders sometimes forget that a lot of the country is comprised of states that are much warmer than we are. Any state which once had slaves picking cotton is warmer than us. Any state Mexicans sneak into is warmer than us. Any state where people surf, any state with a Disney park in it, any state with palm trees, any state with more than one NASCAR track... you guessed it, warmer than us.

Winter is officially when the axis of the Earth is tilting away from the sun in our hemisphere. Weathermen sometimes call winter the 3 months with the coldest temperatures. Other people go by length of day, vernal equinox dates, animal migrations, and a ton of other omens. I personally bracket winter by the first and last snowfalls, although it is a flawed method.

Winter brings the coldness. Cold is a subjective perception thing. Someone from New England might scoff at what someone from Georgia considers to be cold, while someone from Alaska might find the Yankee to be a bit of a wuss.

Even tonight, we're not the coldest place on Earth. The coldest temperature ever recorded reliably was above Lake Rostov in Antarctica, which clocked in at -128 Fahrenheit. That's colder than Mars, if you need a scale of reference.

Cold will happily kill you if you don't protect yourself from it. Humans have an optimal operating temperature in the upper 90s. We're not designed (fur, down, blubber) for colder conditions, and we only survive in places like New England or Scandinavia because we're crafty suckers who figure out stuff like fire and electricity. Without that, we'd be Peopsicles.

How cold does it get around here?

Although it is not Cranberry County, Boston has extensive weather records. Boston is a bit north of Cranberry County, but it also has a more concrete-ish urban heat effect. They are generally just a bit colder than coastal Cranberry County, and warmer than inland Cranberry County.

The same basic logic applies to snowfall, with Boston getting the lesser snow of an East Falmouth rather than the heavier snowfall of the eastern Berkshires.

I just happen to have the January weather records for Boston right here. They go back to 1920. Let's roll through some fun facts, shall we?

- January is the coldest month, with an average high/low temperature range of 36/22. Second coldest? February, followed by December, March, November, April, and October.

- Rolling through the lowest January temperatures, we get a -2 in 2011, a -7 in 2004, -4 in 1994, 1988 and 1981, and an ungodly -12 in 1957. For highs, we hit 69 degrees in 2007 and a lay-out-and-tan 72 degrees in 1950.

- Boston's record for coldest high temperature in a January day is 7 degrees. It was -4 that night, so people were happy with the 7. However, the temperature never dropped below 55 degrees on a day in 1950.

- The state in January has an Average Daily High temperature range in the  of 21.9 degrees in the Berkshires to 29 in Boston to 31 on Martha's Vineyard.

- The lowest temperature ever recorded in Massachusetts was -37 F, in Chester. Nominally warm states like Arizona, California, Missouri and Mayland have all had colder days than that. California also somehow owns the national snowfall event total record at like 20 feet or something.

- Cape Cod, the South Shore, Bristol County and Boston get, generally, about 2/3 of the snow that Worcester gets.

- Average annual snowfall totals (days with at least .1" of snow, and inches of snow per year) for towns in our area:

Boston 22.4 days/43.6"

Boston is our standard, and we'll lead off with it.

Chatham 11.7 days, 28.9"
Martha's Vineyard, 9.7 days, 23.6"
Hyannis,  6.1 days, 15.6"

Chatham and Martha are further out into the ocean, and get clipped by storms more than closer-to-the-mainland Hyannis. The totals spike upward when we go to the mainland, although the South Coast is subject to the same Gulf Stream effect that Cape Cod gets regarding moderate temperatures.

Taunton, 10.3 days, 28.0"
New Bedford, 14.7 days, 33.2"
Wareham, 14.3 days, 36.1 inches
Plymouth, 13.1 days, 36.2"
Hingham, 25 days, 47.1"

Hingham's totals illustrate how the snow is more regular as you move North. Plymouth, Taunton and Wareham (and even the Cape and Islands, once you stare at the numbers a lot) illustrate how, when they do get snow, they tend to get a lot of it. Plymouth gets rain half of the time that Hingham gets snow, but they get more than 2/3 of Hingham's snow in that same time frame.

Blue Hill, 29.1 days, 62.7 inches
Lowell, 20.3 days, 51.9"
Amherst 16.6 days, 36.9"
East Brimfield, 23.1 days, 59.0"
Worcester, 31.7 days, 64.1"
Great Barington, 22.1 days, 61.0"
Worthington, 52.6 days, 79.7"
Ripton, 366 days, 1968"

Worcester, which is in the hills a bit, is used as the Central Massachusetts benchmark on most news programs. Blue Hill is a mountain, or what passes for a mountain in EMass. Amherst is in the Connecticut River Valley, which gets lower totals than, say, Great Barrington. I'm amazed that there is a need to differentiate between the eastern and western pats of Brimfield, but it probably matters a lot to Brimfieldians. Ripton is a fictional community, so I gave it fictional snowfall totals.

- Boston is the windiest of major US cities, with an average wind speed of 12.3 mph.

We're windier than Chicago, the Windy City, which clocks 10.3 mph. Tornado-ridden Oklahoma City only gets 12.2 mph.

- January snowfall totals in Boston

2015, 30"+

2014, 21.8"

2013, 4.8"

2012, 6.8"

2011, 38.3"

2010, 13.2"

2009 23.7"

2007, 1.0"

2005, 43.30"

1996 39.80"

1992, 0.40"

1986, 0.80

1978, 35.90 (that's BEFORE the Blizzard, btw)

1957, 20.6" (They also had a 72 degree day that month)

1945, 42.3"

1920, 24.8"


- Boston's Top Snow Events

2003 Blizzard, 27.5"

Blizzard of '78, 27.1"

Feb. 1969 Blizzard, 26.3"

April Fool's Blizzard, 1997, 25.4"

February 2013 nor'easter, 24.9

Blizzard of 2015, 24.6"

Blizzard of 2005, 22.5"

Blizzard (Feb) 2015, 22.0"

Winter, 2014-2015, 108.6"


- Snowstorm records

* New Hampshire got 13 feet, 8 inches on Mount Washington in one storm.

* Blizzards in 1997 and 1992 dumped over 30" of snow in Worcester.

* When I was at Worcester State College, we got 18" of snow on April 28th, 1987. I had to drive a girl to Berlin, MA and then go back to Worcester in the height of it. What makes the story cool is that, before the storm, I had picked her up at West Boylston High School, because that's how I rolled back in 1987.

* I lived in Monponsett, MA when they got 36" of snow in 2005. I actually had to shovel my way out of the house. There were no high school girls hanging around for this storm.

* The Massachusetts single-event snowfall record is 62", which fell on Great Barrington in a 2013 Blizzard.

* Massachusetts ranks 23rd in a list of Worst US Snow Events, State By State. We lack the mountains or lake-effect lakes to fight the contenders.

The state with the most snow ever from one event is, as you might have guessed, California, where 451 inches fell in the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1911.

- Some historical snow and cold information:

* The British started shooting at the Boston Massacre partly because they were angry that American kids were throwing snowballs at them.

* Russia would be French or Nazi if the Motherland didn't have such rotten winters.

* Cold or snow killed the Frankenstein monster, the Nicholson character in The Shining, several Jack London protagonists, and- via colds, which increase in cold weather- the Martians in The War Of The Worlds. Mr. Freeze of the Batman rogues gallery is dependent upon cold.

* Rudolph only got to drink from the white reindeer fountain because his red nose could be seen through snow.

* Songs about snow include Let It Snow, Hazy Shade Of Winter, Snowblind, Frosty The Snowman, No Quarter, Jingle Bells, Freeze Frame, Winter Wonderland, She's So Cold, The Immigrant Song, Winter Wars, Cold Shot, and just about every Christmas song. I'm not sure if The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald involved or mentioned snow.

- Rappers love chilly names, as Ice Cube, Ice T, Vanilla Ice, LL Cool J, Snow, and Kool Moe Dee prove. White guys who rap stand a strong chance of getting a snow-related nomme de guerre.

* No, Walt Disney is not cryogenically preserved, and yes, Ted Williams is.

* Military engagements with Cold themes include Cold Harbor, the Battle of the Ice, the crossing of the Delaware, the Battle of Quebec, the Battle of the Bulge, Napoleon's invasion of Russia, the Winter War, and the Cold War. There was even a Snow King, but Gustavus fell at the Battle of Lutzen.

* The ditzy blonde on Three's Company was named Christmas Snow, aka Chrissie.

* If a substance is brought down to Absolute Zero, even the molecules in it aren't moving.

* The first documented snowman in history dates back to 1380 AD.

* The tallest snowman ever stood 122 feet high. She was named Olympia Snow, after a Senator in the state (Maine) where the snowman was built.

- Famous New England Cold Events

* The Year Without A Summer

Volcanic activity leads to climate abnormalities, lowering the planet's temperature by a degree.

Frosts in June, July and even August 23rd killed food crops. Famine followed. Massachusetts had snow on June 8th. Massachusetts was not getting western grain at this point, and the death of her corn crops led to spikes in food prices.

The effects were felt world-wide, and didn't go away until several years later.


* The Great Blizzard of 1888

This one followed the unspeakably tragic Schoolhouse Blizzard in Nebraska, although it was not the same storm. This storm was known as the Great White Hurricane. It set up over Cape Cod and beat the Northeast for 2 days.

It dumped 50 inches of snow on parts of Massachusetts and New York. Hurricane force winds mauled the coast. They had just figured out telegraphs at this time, and this was the storm that made them realize that telegraph wires suffer heavily in ice storms.

If your city has their telephone and power wires underground, this is the storm that made them do it. Boston was isolated once her telegraph lines fell, and the drifting snow made it impossible to move goods (especially food and fuel) into the city. New York and Boston were cut off from the rest of the world for some time after the storm.

Factory workers had to work to eat, and many died trying to get to work. This, and the isolation after the storm, is why Boston started working on the nation's first subway system.


* The Blizzard of '78

This is the benchmark storm for anyone over 45 or so. Any large storm since has been compared to it. Storms that dumped more snow in recent times are still considered to be less fearsome than the Blizzard.

This was the perfect storm, and not just in a weather sense. Forecasting figured into the chaos. They actually called the storm properly, but people tended to not believe them. They were still blowing storms as recently as 1991, so some sympathy can be extended in this instance. As it stands, almost everyone went about their daily business, and did nothing to prepare. This is where the bread and milk panics as storms approached were born.

Boston had also had 35" of snow in January (including a 20" storm a few weeks before the blizzard), and it was all still on the ground when this nightmare hit us in early February. This snow would either blow around and drift, or stay on the ground as an shovel-impossible bottom layer of ice.

Snow fell for 2 days, and ended as an ice storm. Boston picked up 27 inches of snow. Highways were full of abandoned cars, and people were trapped in their homes for weeks. The coast was smashed by a full moon storm tide, and the damaged matched or surpassed that done in hurricanes.

I lived on Duxbury Beach for this storm. We never saw a flake of snow, but waves were tearing houses in half. We were evacuated on a fire truck, and lived at either the Governor Winslow School or the Kingston Howard Johnson's for the next few months. Winds passed 85 mph before my wind gauge thingy was torn down.

This storm ended the weather complacency ("Hurricanes are the South's problem, and blizzards are the midwest's concern.") that many New Englanders felt. This monster, plus the additional media focus on weather and weather forecasting technology, meant that future storms wouldn't sneak up on us any more.

If you say nothing more than "the Blizzard" to someone over 50 from Massachusetts, they assume that you are talking about '78.

* 1997 April Fool's Blizzard

April is usually when you start preparing for summer, but that all went up the chimney when this beast laid into us.

Very much like the Blizzard, it dropped tons of snow and gashed the coast with heavy surf. It actually put down more snow (25.something inches) in one day than the Blizzard of '78 did, although '78 rallied to take the overall title on Day 2.

Prior to this storm, the snowiest MONTH of April in history could only ring up 13.3" of snow. This storm beat that in 6 hours.

I was still in Duxbury for that one. I had the only fireplace in a neighborhood of cottages, and I had 10 neighbors sleeping on the floor in front of it once the power was knocked out.

I also had an Australian nanny in the neighborhood, and she was from the part of Australia that has Florida's climate. She had seen snow before, but nothing like this. She kept calling my house and asking "When does the Army come for us?" and "How and where does all of this snow go away to? Does the Army move it?"

April storms are rare, but they are hardcore when they do hit. Coastal New Englanders do no yard repair at all until mid-to-late April.

* The Blizzard of 2003

There are actually two of these, a December storm and one that hit on President's Day. Both dropped 30-40" of snow on Massachusetts.

The PDII stormowns Boston's single day and full-storm total of 27.5 inches of powder.

Everyone had The Weather Channel by this point, so the only people who got snuck up on by this deserved it.


* The Blizzard of 2005

As far as Cranberry County goes, you can choose between this one and the Blizzard of '78. The '78 storm did worse damage and fell on a deeper snowpack, but this storm generally owns the local snowstorm total records.

Sagamore Beach got 40" of snow, while a Bridgewater-Plympton stretch of tiny Route 106 got between 30-38". Most of Cranberry County, from Duxbury to Cape Cod to New Betty to Brockton got between 2 and 3 feet of snow.

I was teaching in the area for this storm, and I got 2 weeks off from it. Highlights include driving a Jeep through the whiteout to pick up some smoking supplies, falling off my roof and landing unharmed on my back in a snow drift, and having my border collie dig our way out of the side door through a snow drift.


* February 2013 Nor'easter

This was our most recent monster. It was like a B+ version of the Blizzard of '78.

This was notable for a few things. It dumped 24.9 inches of snow on Boston, and more on surrounding areas. It was the 5th highest storm total for Boston, and Portland, Maine set a town record with 31.9"

Fearing a sea of abandoned cars of the highways, Governor Deval Patrick declared a state of emergency to send everyone home, and then implemented a driving ban. It was the fist time we have had a ban since the '78 storm.

This was also a storm, along with Hurricane Irene, which showed us that NSTAR needed to step up their game. This storm ravaged much of the eastern USA, and NSTAR crews were spread thin. It took a long time to get the power back on, and this- unlike Irene- was during a period where low temperatures were in the teens during the blackout.

I got home from work one day during the blackout to find an empty house. Soon, my girlfriend called. "I have the kid and the cat, and we're driving South until we find a hotel with electricity." A state trooper turned her around in Connecticut.
* Late January-March, 2015

Yeah, we all remember THAT.

Tide Charts

National Weather Service Page For This Storm

NWS Boston Facebook Page

Heavy Snow Possible, Coastal Flooding Also In The Mix

Southeastern Massachusetts is right on the edge of what will be a history-worthy blizzard just a bit down the coast. Snowfall is possible, while coastal flooding is more of a certainty.

The Blizzard of 2016 is coming. It's going to hit the mid-Atlantic harder than it is going to hit us. This is a bit unusual, as there will soon be cities in North Carolina that have had a greater one-storm snowfall total than cities in Massachusetts can boast of. Areas in the mid-Atlantic could pick up 3 feet of snow.

They already have a Blizzard Warning there (it's snowing in Charlotte, NC right now), and we have a Winter Storm Warning in SE Massachusetts.

We're not getting that much snow up here in southeast Massachusetts. We are currently forecast to get 3-6" on the South Coast, Cape Cod, and southern Plymouth County. That "three to six inches" thing is a bit touchy, as a slight wobble in the storm path could screw mightily with those projected snowfall totals.

I have no problem at all morally saying something to my readers along the lines of "We could get anywhere between rain, flurries, five inches of snow or two feet of it." Have a wide array of responses at your disposal for Saturday and Sunday.

It should be interesting to see Carolina dealing with  bona-fide blizzard. Washington DC was ground to a halt Wednesday by an inch of snow. They have no means of dealing with the snow they're getting. There should be a lot of wrecked pickup trucks once the F-360s start, a C&W sort of Ice Capades.

New England, should we end up getting socked as well, may have some power outage issues. The mid-Atlantic is going to be commanding the lion's share of the restoring-power resources. This delays their response in Massachusetts. It has happened before, my friends, and it will happen again.

However, our share of the storm could be nothing at all. This is one of those situations with high variety between Best Case and Worst Case scenarios. Accuweather has changed my forecast from 3-6" to 6'-10" and back in just the last 24 hours.

We could even hear that B Word used in our forecasts. Blizzards only need 3 hours of certain conditions to qualify, and we are currently forecast to have all of those conditions at some point between Saturday and Sunday.

Our big concern with this storm will be coastal flooding. This storm will have a small blizzard area, but it will have a much larger area of high winds. Those winds will almost certainly hit Massachusetts, and we could have a long stretch of 35-50 MPH winds.

Those winds will stir up the ocean mightily. We will have problem tides Saturday night and especially Sunday morning. Sunday's tides might be mollified somewhat by the wind shifting to the N/NW direction.

The flooding will be influenced by the full-moon high tides, which are astronomically inopportune this weekend.

Here's a nice link to check tides.

The wind shift makes even coastal flooding a tough call, but it is a bit easier of a sell than predicting the snowfall totals.

The fun should start Saturday AM, and should grind to a halt at some point Sunday.

It goes without saying that you should know which taverns have a generator if the power should go out during the Patriots game.

Here are some more maps:

The map is from Monday, but still interesting

Good Luck!

Know Thy Enemy: The Kansas City Chiefs

Kansas City is pretty much textbook Middle America. You can sail into town on the Missouri River. The thing they are best known for is barbecue food. Walt Disney, Ginger Rogers, Tiny Archibald, Amelia Earhart and Walter Cronkite lived there. Hostess and Hallmark are both headquartered there. They even have a cool theme song.

Its tough to hate them. I'm going to try, however.

You see, Kansas City is the home of the Chiefs. The gods set things up so that these Chiefs are the first team who your Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots have to stomp on to continue being your Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots. No other rubric by which one can judge Kansas City matters. Therefore, an entire American city must be fed into the Hate Machine.

Where to begin?

- Why isn't Kansas City in Kansas? They managed to get New York City in New York, right? It should be automatic... Kansas City, Kansas.

Kansas City is the difference between a C+ and B- on a middle school Geography test. God ony knows how many kids who might have made a difference in the world were instead kept out of AP classes because their mind did the logical leap from Kansas City to Kansas state?

With all the blood that has spilled in Missouri over the years, shouldn't someone have raised a musket to put Kansas City in the right state? Or at least force a change to Missouri City? Am I wrong on this?

- The football team is like the Von Erich curse of the NFL. It's a death ship.

Joe Delaney, a promising young running back, drowned trying to save kids who got in over their heads. He was brave enough that he tried to save them without knowing how to swim.

Derrick Thomas, one of the best linebackers ever, decided to drive 100 mph through a snowstorm without a seat belt on, and he was dead a month after the accident.

Jovan Belcher shot his girlfriend, drove over to the Chiefs practice, and then shot himself in front of Scott Pioli.

Promising youngster Mack Lee Hill died during knee surgery back in the 1960s.

Stone Johnson didn't even get to the regular season before dying of a spinal cord injury.

Hey, our players kill someone now and then, maybe deflate some balls, sometimes peek at the other team's signals... but KC has a body count.

- The Chiefs have been very impolite to Champagne Tom in the past. Bernard Pollard hit Tom Brady in the knee during the very first game of the season after Tom had sh*t on the NFL for 50 TDs. It happened during what ended up being one of the last good seasons Randy Moss had left, too.

Now, they have several guys who could also do a number on Tommy Cool. Justin Houston, who doesn't play for Houston, has about 40 sacks in the last two years. Tamba Hali is known for crushing QBs. Dontari Poe, who isn't related to Edgar Allen but who does weigh about 350 pounds, is also someone who I would not like to see get a hold of the Brady Bunchden.

New England's offensive line has been oft-ineffective this season, and Saturday's game would be a bad time for them to play down to their lowest level.

- For the reputation they enjoy as a barbecue Mecca, Kansas City's most well-known restaurant chain is friggin' Applebee's. I may be skipping something prominent, but I think that their biggest barbecue-related export is KC's Masterpiece, a C- economy sauce.

Of course, that is somewhat cancelled out by KC having 90 barbecue joints in her metropolitan area, a fact that makes me think that I should stop Chief-hatin' and start clean-platin'... but f*cking Applebee's, man? Someone should get a smack for that.

- Their best player is injured... but before he got injured, I had him on my fantasy team. You' the ace of spades, Jamaal Charles, the g*ddamned ace of spades!

- They got the wrong historical Thomas Hart Benton guy.

Senator Thomas Hart Benton was one of a kind. He shot Andrew Jackson, but later counted him as a friend. He also gave us one of the better quotes about ass-kicking, delivered with his proclivity for saying "Sir" every 5 words or so.

"I do not quarrel, Sir, but I fight, Sir, and when I fight, Sir, a funeral follows, Sir."

THAT version of Thomas Hart Benton settled in St. Louis. Kansas City instead got Thomas Hart Benton, painter. I doubt that he threatened anyone with a funeral.

- The Chiefs were founded because the NFL didn't want to water down their product just as they were beginning to compete on even terms with Major League Baseball. This led to the AFL, where the New England (then Boston) Patriots also came from.

The Chiefs were originally the AFL's Dallas Texans, but when the NFL brought the Cowboys to Dallas, the Texans had trouble keeping up with them. Kansas City was able to steal them away. They very nearly ended up in Atlanta or Miami.

- The "Chiefs" name has nothing to do with Native Americans. The team was named for the Mayor (Harold Roe Bartle) who helped get the team there. Bartle was a great organizer, and everyone called him "the Chief."

- No, I don't know why they have an Arrowhead mascot as opposed to a pudgy, nerdy but well-organized white politician mascot.

- The team name was taken from fan suggestions. It is unfair to say "contest," because the two names to get the most votes were "Mules" and "Royals." They later hung the Royals name on their baseball team.

-Owner Lamar Hunt, son of H.L.Hunt, sketched the design for the team's logo (an arrowhead with "KC" in the middle) onto a napkin.

- The coolest name in Missouri belongs to the "St. Louis Blues." The worst is hung on the "St. Louis Rams," who may be are leaving town anyhow. Blues is a straight A, Rams is a generous F, while both the Royals and the Chiefs are in the C range.

- The Chiefs have a terrible playoff history, which is ironic because they were the first powerhouse AFL team. Joe Namath's Jets just beat them to the title of First AFL team to win a Super Bowl. Their curb-stomping of the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV was bad enough that the NFL accepted a merger, just ahead of talk that the NFL was no match for the AFL any more.

Their win over the Houston Texans last week was their first playoff win since 1993, when they beat now-retired Warren Moon's now-defunct Houston Oilers. They went most of the 1970s wthout making the playoffs, had a brief resurgence in the 1980s under the dirty rotten rhymer Marty Schottenheimer, got the tail end of Joe Montana and Marcus Allen's careers, had the best Nigerian player ever, and never won Ditka.

- The Chiefs started this season 1-5, and then won 10 straight games to sneak into the playoffs. They destroyed Houston, and now they are the next clown out of the car for New England.

- Know that the Chiefs labor under the Curse Of Hank Stram.

Stram, their first coach, won a Super Bowl, but then the team stagnated. He was fired shortly after the Chiefs lost to Tampa Bay, who had dropped 26 straight games. He resented his firing, and subsequently cursed the team by saying they'd never make it to the Super Bowl until he wore Chiefs red again. Stram died without ever donning Red.

They haven't come close since.

Hopefully, this Saturday, we'll keep it that way.

Arthur & Pat's Going To Hull?

from the Arthur and Pat's Facebook page

People who were mourning the loss of a local institution will now be complaining about the long, strange road they have to go down to get to it.

My sources tell me that the owners of Arthur and Pat's (the D'Allesandro siblings) have bought the former Sea Dog restaurant in Hull. They will kick off the cooking this summer.

Arthur and Pat's was an iconic Marshfield restaurant known for their yummy breakfast menu and their unique customer service. Even with Italian owners, they were a crown jewel of the Irish Riviera. To my knowledge, breakfast there was one of the better South Shore hangover cures.

They announced the end of the road with Marsh Vegas last April.

Everyone from the area has their own favorite A&P story. I liked that the waitresses would tell you what you were having that day if they knew you well enough. I hated their banana bread, but I wolfed down several pieces over the years, rather than risk an argument with someone who cooked 2-5 of my meals every week.

Also, if they knew that you were an orphan, they'd insist that you eat everything on the plate before you were allowed to leave.

Local news legend Jerry Williams ate there every day he was able to, and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler once called it the best food in the world. It won Best Breakfast (and usually retired the trophy) in every local publication, and in several Boston ones.

There is a job fair happening at the former Sea Dog on January 14, from 12-2 and then from 5-7.  They seem to be looking for summer positions. I think that you can also apply to work at the Marina during this job fair.

The Sea Dog is on A Street in Hull.

Here's what I don't know:

- I'm not sure if it will be called "Arthur & Pat's."

- I also don't know if they will keep the Sea Dog name. The Maine-based business never really caught on with the flatlanders.

- I'm not sure if they will be open year-round.

- I'm not sure if this building will be in a flood zone.

- I don't know if they will keep the same basic A&P menu.

- Arthur & Pat's has a mighty reputation, but it sort of exhausts itself by the time you get to Hull. Most of the people on the Hull Facebook page I was monitoring had never heard of it.

So, Arthur & Pat's is not dead! They're just migrating. Strappin' on the feed bag in H-U-Double-Hockeysticks just got a lot better!

They Call It Stormy Sunday...

I was kind of hoping to have the Kansas City Chiefs coming to town for a playoff game in an old-fashioned New England gale, but no dice. Maybe we'll get worse weather net week!

Remember, if all of this rain were falling in colder weather, we'd be looking at Top 20 All Time snowfall.

The fun should start early today, before you wake up if you're one of our more hard-living readers.

It will be very windy today, especially on the South Shore, South Coast and Cape Cod. You could lose your trees or your power. To bring it back to football, I had the power blow during an ocean storm for the Tennessee/St. Louis version of the Super Bowl one year, and I had to drive around Duxbury in my Jeep to "get" the end of the game.

We're not expecting major coastal fooding, even with a New Moon in play today. The SE wind could pile up some water in isolated areas, but I wouldn't wager any money on it.

Opening Day Blues: The Peril Of Driving In The First Snow Of The Season

We have had a couple of minor winter weather events recently, officially kicking off the Snow season. With this snowfall came a slew of fender-bending fun. Monday's evening commute was a doozy on the South Shore, as ocean-effect snow came down hard.

This snow was the catalyst behind dozens of car crashes. If you surfed Facebook on Monday afternoon, you saw the horror stories coming in.

"Kingston to Green Harbor, 60 minutes."

"Tried getting off the highway onto Route 53.... bad idea. Parking lot."

"Four concurrent accidents between Exit 11 and Exit 10 in Duxbury."

"Route 44: 10 Miles, 45 Minutes."

We wrote yesterday about how Southerners have difficulties driving in snow. A warm city like Atlanta can be shoved into zombie-apocalypse chaos by 2 inches of snow. For one day every year, so can Massachusetts.

While it snowed for a good, long time yesterday, in the end, we only got 2-4". That's nothing. Last year, we were getting 2-4 inches an hour for about 6 weeks. While I don't have the numbers for Massachusetts handy, I'd bet that it took 20 inches of February snow to get the highway anarchy that we had Monday night with our 2 inches.

I did poke around those Internets to see if I could find anything official-looking to validate my suspicions. An article from a 2004 Pennsylvania newspaper cites a study of 1.4 million fatal accidents showed that a substantially larger percentage of fatal accidents went down on the first day of snowfall in a season.

First snowfalls are especially deadly for elderly drivers, who seem to be mixing "difficulties adjusting to winter conditions" with "this was the event where Grammy really began to show her age" and adding a touch of "Grandpa needs to upgrade from his 1976 Coupe De Ville."

A more recent article concerning an Iowa State Patrol study showed that in 2014, there were 700 accidents in November. Most of these were attributed to snowfall. In December, which in theory is deeper in the winter and subsequently snowier, the number of accidents drops to 359.

Wisconsin, which is snowier than Massachusetts, agrees with my theory enough that at least one newspaper there titled an article "People Need To Re-Learn How To Drive."

Its the same set of mistakes in any snowy community. People drive too fast, they ride the other car's bumper, and they respond poorly to snow-related hazards. In non-wintry communities, you can add "lack of snow-removal equipment" to the mix.

People who get year-after-year snow have a tendency to adjust as the winter sets in, which the Iowa study shows. They ease up on the gas pedal, they avoid dangerous or busy roads, they remember to leave earlier, they get snow tires, and they perform a zillion other calibrations to their driving style.

We are actually at a high point in snow-driving proficiency among people in Southeastern Massachusetts. Last winter was one of our worst ever. Many towns shattered their winter snowfall record totals. You may live a long time before you see a winter like that one.

This means that almost every driver on the local roads, with the exception of snowbirds and kids who just got their license this year, has some experience driving in the worst winter conditions that Massachusetts can dish out. Teenagers right now have the same Worst Winter Ever perspective as a 70 year old man. That should make for a lengthy period of slightly better local driving.

Except during the first snowfall, of course. We all fall to pieces then.

Why Can't Southerners Drive In Snow?

Is It Really That Difficult?

(Editor's Note: This is from a 2014 article at a site we used to write for...)

Bourne had a bit of snow falling this morning, and it snowed through 10 AM or so. It was good for about 2-3", at least where I am in Sagamore. The schools in Bourne almost but didn't delay or cancel. The roads will be a bit slick, especially if they don't plow them. They may even not plow them, as towns sometimes choose to save Snow Removal funding for more serious events. This is no big deal. 3" or so, maybe 6" on the Islands. We golf in snow like that.

This same storm- granted, with a touch more intensity- just went through the South. Normally warm places like Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina are getting snow, ice, or both. These are regions of the country that generally don't get snow. Being able to build a snowman in Savannah, Georgia is almost as rare as being attacked by an alligator while swimming in Cape Cod Bay.

You can say that the Confederacy had a philosophical mindset about the snowfall only if you remember that Anarchy is a philosophy. Cars are frozen in place on the highways. Children are stranded in schools, or even- in Hotlanta- in a school bus by the roadside. The Governor is urging citizens to remain in their homes. The term "zombie movie" is used in a descriptive manner by CNN. The storm is being called "the Atlanta Snow Jam" by one newspaper, who have "unspeakably horrible commute" in their headlines. Atlanta had about 1000 motor vehicle accidents, and triple digit casualties.

Atlanta had 2.7" of snow.

There is a State Of Emergency in just about any state that once produced cotton in large quantities. It is a justified condition. In both southern/national headlines and my Facebook, I hear tales of 18 hour commutes, highway parking lots, shelters being opened, people missing or unaccounted for, airport delays, scared kids in buses, and general all-around chaos. The last time this region was so worried about getting someone out of a bus, it was Rosa Parks.

People with even a moderate interest in Weather History, or people who were living in Massachusetts in the 1970s, immediately think "Blizzard of '78" when they read the stories coming out of Alabama (the link leads to an article with "Aaaaughh!" in the headline). You hear the same tales of frozen highways, car-camping, old people freezing to death, pregnant women stranded in their homes, and what have you.

Now, the difference between the two regions in this case is that Atlanta has about 2 inches of snow, and Massachusetts got 2 feet of snow in the Blizzard of '78. Two feet and change, actually.

Before I discuss what I think causes these differences, I want it stated early in the article that the Dirty South are no punks. Most of the Civil War was the South slapping the North around, and the North only really won through attrition. If General Armistead charged a little harder at Gettysburg, you could pretty much look at the numbers and be like "a kid from Louisiana can beat two kids from New York, even if you give the Yankees all of the railroads and food." This snow chaos we have in South Carolina and the relative calm in Massachusetts is not a case where, as General Pickett once said, "I think the Yankees may have had something to do with it."

So, why does snow that a housewife on Monument Beach might not even notice cause such chaos in Mississippi?

We're going to focus on vehicles for starters, in a manner which can be concurrently positive, negative, and a perceived positive that actually works out to be a negative once you think on it a bit. When chaos is ensuing and you need to place blame, it is not a bad idea to think of something you may have been mistakenly confident about.

That's a snow plow. You don't need me to tell you that, because- when it snows- you see them all over Bourne. Someone from Louisiana might look at that same plow sort of like how you or I would look at an armadillo. You'd know what it is, but seeing one in action would be a first.

Plows, and their good friends Salt and Sand, are essential when trying to clear snow from a road. Sand and Salt either provide traction or they melt snow/reduce the temperature at which water freezes. The plows do the bull work of removing the piles of snow that build up.

If you like numbers as much as I do.... chew on these.

- Helsinki, which is in Finland, removes about 200,000 truckloads of snow from their streets in a harsh winter.

- Montreal, which gets 5-6 feet of snow per winter, spends $158 million on snow removal for a year.

- Boston, which has 850 miles of roadway, has over 500 "pieces" of snow removal equipment, and I don't think that they count shovels.

- Miami has never had accumulating snow, and has only had flurries a few times.

- Florida and Louisiana have an average annual snowfall of 0.0". Alabama and the Carolinas, which have mountains, get roughly 1.3" of snow per year.

- Massachusetts gets 43" of snow a year, a bit more inland, a bit less near the Cape.

- New York gets 123" of snow a year, less as you near NYC.

- After the "Great Snow of 1717," much of New England was buried under 25 foot drifts.

- The record snowfall in the US from one storm is 189 inches... in California, of all places. Mount Shasta, to be precise.

- Atlanta has roughly 2.7" of snow so far. Boston, which is nowhere near holding the national record, got 27.1" of snow in 24 hours during the Blizzard of '78. The effects on the people in each city were similar.

- South Carolina, which has some mountainous territory, gets .3 days of snowfall a year. That's about 8 hours, generally spread out over a dozen or two mountain weather events.

-  If you add up the average amount of hours it is snowing in Michigan in a year, snowfall fills 44 days.

- Finally.... Bourne, which has 20,000 people in the summer, has enough town plows and subcontractors out on the road that the girl at the Highway Department wouldn't even venture a guess when I called to ask how many plows Bourne had. From what I hear on the news, Atlanta, which has 5 million people in her metropolitan area, has 10 plows. They recently (yesterday) bought 12 plow blades, which they are going to attach to municipal vehicles.

Bourne has all of those plows because they NEED all of those plows. We'd look just as silly on the snowy roads as Alabamians (?) do if we didn't have plows out clearing the streets. Why doesn't Alabama have plows? The last heavy snow in Alabama was 1993's most-likely-aptly-named Storm Of The Century. They'd be fools if they bought and maintained 500 snow plows. The environment doesn't merit it. It's why people in Kansas don't have surfboards.

A bias exists, and it gets worse as you head North. People in Massachusetts laugh at people from Georgia when snow falls. People from New Hampshire laugh at how poorly Massachusetts flat-landers drive in snow. People in Canada laugh at people in New Hampshire. Eskimos laugh at Canadians, and Santa Claus thinks everyone South of him (at last count: all of us) are wussies.

But are there other factors for the Great Atlanta Snow-In?

I spent some time searching for Southern driving apologists on the Internet. You hear a lot of talk about snow tires and chains. While Massachusetts is snowy a little bit, I don't know anyone who uses chains on their tires. I'm sure that there are people in Alberta who don't know anyone who doesn't use chains.

There was also some discussion regarding the relative predominance of dirt roads in the South, with other people pointing out that some people from places like Mobile had never driven on anything but pavement (with the only variation ever being wet pavement). People who have lived in both climates (many northerners move south, and they dilute the "southerners can't drive in snow" argument as they multiply... our own Snowbirds are guilty of this, especially in the winter) say that dirt roads are actually better for snow, but become worse when the snow melts.

You also hear a lot of pickup truck talk. If you don't have a pickup truck in the South, you're kind of like a sissy. They're everywhere in the Confederacy, sort of like grits. Most of the problems lie in relation to the pickup having almost all of her weight in the front. This leads to those spinning crashes you see on The Weather Channel so often during Southern snowfall. Weather watchers call those the "F-360."

You hear NASCAR mentioned a lot, and it is important to the discussion. It comes down to interests vs environment.... nature vs nurture, if you will.

Southerners adore NASCAR. They follow it extensively, and being a fan of NASCAR means that even a dummy is going to pick up a lot of how-a-car-works knowledge. That should lead to how-a-car-performs knowledge, which should lead to a better, more educated driver. Throw in the better intersection behavior you see in Southern Hospitality culture and the Hurricane Belt earned-wisdom sense of "let's just work together and get through this storm," and you'd think the car-loving Southerners would do all right in storms.

All that is true, but it is somewhat offset by the fact that NASCAR is essentially Tailgating and Hostile Passing at 190 mph. "Driving well" in Daytona is "being 6 inches from someone's rear bumper on a turn." A little exchange of paint is almost like a Hello, especially among the veteran NASCAR drivers.

Of course, Southerners don't generally try to drive like their NASCAR heroes when commuting home from their office jobs in Savannah. However, what a Duxbury housewife thinks is tailgating might be different than what someone who roots for Dale Junior thinks tailgating is. When a Yankee with a brain in her head backs off someone on the highway in a snowstorm, the distance might be 100 yards. A serious NASCAR fan might view a proper distance as 20 yards.

The NASCAR expertise of the Southerner is offset by the snowy experience of the Civil War victors, even when the aggressive/possibly insane Boston driving style is figured into the equation. Pocasset people know to pump their brakes, and how to turn into a skid. We develop a sense of how to drive in different rates of snowfall. We look at a balding tire in October and think that we'd better change it soon with more foreboding than someone from Ole Miss does. Crikey, we're even a much better bet to have the little bear paw ice-scraper thing than an Auburn fan would be.

To be fair and honest, I think that, if people who are deep into NASCAR lived in more wintry climates, they would evolve to be better snow drivers than Cape Codders. But they don't, and they aren't.

In fact, looking at relative impact and using my old Civil War logic.... 2.7 inches of snow in a day hits Atlanta like 27.1 inches of snow hits Boston. Therefore, we drive about 10 times better in snow than one of those Roll Tide SOBs. This is a personal guess of mine, and I'm using a rubric that State Farm probably doesn't recognize. If the Civil War were fought by my rubric, the key to beating Bobbie Lee would have been to lure him into Maine.

In closing, I want to say that I have a lot of sympathy for our Red State cousins. They are getting a snow event that they can tell their grandchildren about. It is hitting a region where no one has a puffy coat, and where fireplaces- if they exist at all- are ornamental. The ice will take down power lines, so people used to Mississippi in the middle of a heat wave will instead have Jack Frost nipping at their noses. As I publish this at noon, there are kids in Georgia who still haven't gotten home from school yesterday.

And there, but for the grace of God, Jimmie Johnson, and the snow plow, goes You.

Handling Important Business

To Hostess Cakes,

I am writing to express my desire that you bring back the Suzy Q snack cakes. I realize that you guys had those business issues a few years ago and that things may have become confusing. However, this is no excuse for not bringing back Suzy Qs. I mean, WTF? You have Sno Balls, Chocolate Twinkies, Zingers... but no Suzy Qs?

You're very lucky that I m heavily drugged most of the time, because I am constantly tempted to come down to your offices and cause difficulties. I am presently refusing to allow myself to see where your corporate offices are located, because I may be like "Oh, they're only in Pennsylvania, I can be there in 8 hours." Nothing good would come from that.

I'll be frank with you. Healthy eating means little to me, as I feel it is the realm of the weak. Ever since I was a kid, I liked to come home to some Quik, some Pub Fries, and some Suzy Qs. None of those items are available to me any more (Quik changed their formula a decade or so ago, and hasn't been good since, and ConAgra refused my less strident demands that they bring back Pub Fries), and I'll admit that some unwarranted frustration is building. I am not alone.

I've been filling the void with Devil Dogs and Cup Cakes, but this is a lot to ask of two individual snack cake brands.

Since you've had some business trouble lately, let me offer some free advice as to what you need to do to get the ship righted over there:

1) Bring back Suzy Qs.

2) Determine which executive was responsible for killing off Suzy, and literally kick him down the hallway and out of the door. I would not be above lobotomizing this individual.

3) Take out an advertisement during the next Super Bowl to apologize to America for this error. Show the beating/involuntary surgery from Item #2 if you wish.

4) If you refuse to bring back Suzy Qs, the only way to keep me safely on Cape Cod is to immediately send me one (1) carton of Devil Dogs weekly for the rest of my life. I'm 47 and do not have a healthy lifestyle, but I have terrific resiliency and stamina. I'd say that you could lay off the throttle by 2050 or so.

I thank you for the time, and urge you to do the right thing,

Cranberry Jones

Who Has The Money In Cranberry County?

Well, now that we have all that Baby Jesus and Peace On Earth stuff out of the way, let's wonder about how much money each of us has!

This site could indeed be the friggin' Warlock of your Jealous Face.

It lists the median household income for each town in Massachusetts. As you know, median household income is the amount that divides the income distribution into two equal groups, half having income above that amount, and half having income below that amount.

Yeah, I didn't know that either.

It is an effective means of determining and comparing regional wealth distribution. Massachusetts has a median household income of $67,846 and some coins. We're comfortably ahead of most other states, who combine to have a $53,482 national average. The information we'll use is ranged from 2010-2014.

Worry not if the green-eyed devil of Envy overcomes you a bit as you read this. It's natural to want what the other man has, and men as sublime as Napoleon have said that religion exists merely to keep the poor from slaughtering the rich.

We won't get into all of that just yet, but will instead break down Eastern Massachusetts in a way that you aren't used to seeing.

We're used to thinking Geographically, i.e. "Carver is west of Plymouth," and we'd all be constantly lost if we didn't. However, things are generally multi-dimensional. As Steven Wright once said to a woman who told him that his socks didn't match, "They match to me, because I go by Thickness."

Likewise, we shall go Economic.

If you look at the state through a lens of median household income, you see several interesting facts. For starters, the eastern half of the state would be far better off if we jettisoned everything west of Worcester. They sort of bog us down, and our total would be much higher if we traded Western Massachusetts for maybe the Nashua area and the more industrious parts of Rhode Island.

Let them have UMass, the Basketball Hall Of Fame and Six Flags. I'm not looking down on Western Mass, as there was once a time when ritzy Duxbury was a backwater farm town, and the western part of the state had profitable mills. Times just change, player.

However, Massachusetts is a part of the megalopolis that runs down to about coastal Virginia. After that, America itself is a sort of Western Massachusetts. There are wealthy communities all across America, but the only place you see deep blotches on a color-coded median household income map is the megalopolis.

We (Southeastern Massachusetts) are sort of a upper middle class of Massachusetts. The real money in the state seems to be in the Metrowest and Essex County. We do OK, but the bucks tend to look inland more than coastal.

In fact, once you go south of tony Duxbury, you can't find a town with a MHI of more than $96K. Cape Cod scores worse than you'd think she would. At that point, you are really too far away to reasonably commute into Boston. You'd never see the sun shining on your house.

We're not lower class- that's out west, remember- but we aren't the big earners in the state. Weston, at a MHI of $201K, is the highest in the state. Gosnold, population 75, has the lowest MHI at $31K, no mean feat in a town that the Forbes family owns land in.

So, let's carve up some communities, and sort through the Earners and the Slackers.

CAPE COD AND THE ISLANDS

You have four heavy hitters in this region: Sandwich ($84K), Oak Bluffs ($80K), Chilmark ($67K) and Nantucket ($86K). Handcuff them to some lesser-earning regions, like Gosnold, Wellfleet ($45K), Truro ($58K), D-Y ($50 and $55K, respectively) and Provincetown ($41K).

The rest of the Cape works a range of $58-69K.

Bourne, Falmouth, Mashpee, Chatham, Brewster, Harwich and Eastham are all within about $4k of each other, with Barnstable ($58K, a lot of damned good those Kennedys do!) and Orleans (also $58K) just under the $60K Mendoza Line.

You'd think that the Cape would score better. Only Sandwich and Nantucket wouldn't get snobbed straight off the South Shore, at least with the Money Talk. Big Bank takes Little Bank.


THE SOUTH COAST

The sketchy South Coast that we all know and love has a rather wide disparity of wealth. Her two major population centers (New Bedford and Fall River) range between $33K and $36K. That is what standardized test people refer to as the Bottom Percentile.

There is some paper to be found on the South Coast. Westport ($80K), Rochester ($94K) and Freetown ($82K) can spread the CREAM around. These are the people you should burglarize if you live in New Beffuh or Fall Down River.

The South Coast, depending on how you stretch it, has some other nice spots. D-R ($85K each), Dighton, Lakeville and Berkley (all between $82 nd $85K) hve some cheddar, but the expansion also nets you large population/low income ($52K) Taunton.

Dartmouth, Acushnet, Fairhaven and Wareham all clock in the 60s, while Marion, Mattapoisett, Swansea, Somerset and Seekonk are in the 70s.

THE SWAMPLANDS

Call it the interior South Shore or interior Southeastern Massachusetts if you like. It all depends on how you carve up the South Shore, as well as what you do when you go too far north physically and culturally to claim South Coast.

Again, the big population center here is the lower income area. Brockton rocks a solid $48K MHI, although it is hardly representative of the region.

The three Bridgewaters (East, West, and just plain Bridgewater) run the $80-88K range, with Westie slacking to the $81K level. Throw in their cousin Raynham at $80K, too.

The better rich/poor part of town story involves the Atlleboros, where North earns $81K, while regular Attleboro sleeps late every day and only clocks $65K.

Easton ($95K) and Mansfield ($93K) dominate the region financially. If you can chop Easton off of North Easton, you get an even more impressive number, although I may have that back asswards.


THE SOUTH SHORE

Here there be Moolah.

The South Shore is the economic anchorman of the Southeastern Massachusetts region. Your average Cohasset ($117K) resident earns three or four times what some poor Fall River SOB hauls home off the fishing boat every year, probably without ever leaving the nice, warm office.

It is not the economic engine of SE Massachusetts, as most of her wealth dribbles down from Boston. She also does not have any great effect upon how things are run in, say, Barnstable. There is not what biologists call a Symbiotic Relationship.

Duxbury rules the region to the tune of $120K. They surged past Cohasset when I moved to the Cape, a move which concurrently dropped Bourne under Falmouth.

Dat Next Level Down is comprised of Norwell ($110K), Hingham ($103K), Scituate ($102K), and Hanover ($98K). They sort of finish off the region's Top Percentile. Barely missing the top percentile are Marshfield ($89K), Pembroke ($89K) and Kingston ($86K).

Moving inland a bit, you'd also net Plympton ($94K), Hanson ($93K) and Abington ($81K). The weak links are Halifax ($69K), Rockland ($66K), Whitman ($76K, and before you get mad, know that Whitman would be a Fat Cat if she were on the other side of the Cape Cod Canal), Carver ($72K) and Middleboro ($75K).

The larger towns in the region- Weymouth and Plymouth- grade out lower than the Hinghams and Scituates of the area. They kick in $69K and $76K respectively.

Don't hate the player... hate the game.