Yikes! Yet Another New England Snow Storm

[3113]

Supposed to be a biggie, but whadda I know? My two prior warnings of big snow storms went bust:

A winter storm warning issued Saturday night by the National Weather Service was to remain in effect for a large swath of southern New England, including in Boston, in Providence, Rhode Island, and in Hartford, Connecticut, until the early morning hours of Tuesday. Light snow began falling in the Boston area earlier in the day, but what forecasters are calling a "long duration" storm is expected to become more intense on Sunday.

By Monday night, 12 to 18 inches of fresh snow could be on the ground in parts of the region, which is still coping with the aftereffects of storms that hit over the last couple of weeks and dumped record-high snowfall totals in some places.

More here.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2005/1536795785_7cf5cb62df_m.jpg

This Boston dog is ready for the storm!

 

[Hypoxia]

Gosh, snow in New England! Who could have imagined?

[/me tries to look surprised]

 

[JackLuis]

This will help the snow bound.

Why we drink hot chocolate in the winter

Few beverages are as engrained in Americans’ collective childhood memories quite like hot chocolate. It’s a drink that reminds us of snow days, sledding, or a quiet day watching the snow fall.

What is it about a hot mug of chocolate in the depths of winter that brings a smile? More so then eating a bar of chocolate?

Well, for one, it’s hot and truly warms you up on a cold day. Plus, the luxurious taste and feel of drinking hot chocolate that then warms your whole body is exquisite! It is thick, silky and rich tasting!

So wrap your lips around the hot think fluids and suck.

 

[lovecraft68]

See I heard-for most of RI- a total of 10" between today and Tuesday. Supposedly about 3" tonight then a stoppage then more tomorrow and throughout the night.

 

[Hypoxia]

So wrap your lips around the hot think fluids and suck.

Constantly.

And let us not forget that the prime ingredient in cocoa is theobromos, the food of the gods. (Read Kage Baker's COMPANY books for reports on how theobromos affects immortals.) A thick squirt always starts my day. And your citation leads me into a rant I was thinking of mere minutes ago, as I broke-in a new electric teapot and brewed the thick hot ginger tea I'm now sipping.

<rant>

I like hot flavored drinks -- thermal-hot and/or spice-hot.

I do not buy prepared chocolate. I mix baking cocoa, non-sugar sweetener, and usually a bit of something else for my fix. That something else may be orange extract, or vanilla, or cloves or chili or cinnamon powder, or a dab of Turkish-grind coffee. The traditional Mayan-Aztec preparation uses cocoa, vanilla, and hot peppers -- THAT will knock you off your throne!

I like wide ranges of coffees. I occasionally make a Turkish-style sludge but I mostly use a Krups 872 espresso maker to brew various caf+decaf blends. (If made with decaf, the result is depresso.) I buy cheap flavoured coffees for the taste zap; or I throw chunks of cloves or cinnamon or pepper seeds or whatever in with the grounds, or just add appropriate spices to the brew. The French press is saved for travelling -- too messy to use at home.

I like hot ginger: a mix of ginger powder, non-sugar sweetener, and once again, something else: citrus extract, chili again, a tiny bit of fennel or anise, whatever. I'm always experimenting with other spices. And both the cocoa and ginger drinks deserve a dollop of lo-cal whipped cream.

I love chai masala, spiced Indian-style tea. Some I buy pre-mixed and some I make myself, with green or black tea, sweetener again, and various selected spices: cloves, cardamom, allspice, cinnamon, vanilla, anise/fnnel, ginger, chili, nutmeg, et fucking cetera. Should be topped with more whipped cream.

I like Russian-style tea and jam but I'm too lazy to use a samovar so I just brew up black tea, throw in a spoonful of berry jam (straw- or black- or blue- or whatever), more sweetener and more whipped cream or maybe just a splash of non-dairy 'milk': almond or quinoa or hempseed.

Whipped cream and 'milks' act as emulsifiers and help blend the flavors. That's my excuse and I won't change it.

I'm not a total sweetness freak. I like genmai-cha Japanese tea, made with green tea leaves and powder and brown rice. I like this a little salty; maybe just a pinch of sea salt, maybe a splash of soy sauce or a dollop of miso paste. I also drink a fair amount of miso soup, the broth often punched-up with a dash of tabasco.

Drinking LOTS of such beverages has been a major part of my weight-drop program. It works.

</rant>

 

[Handley_Page]

Constantly.

And let us not forget that the prime ingredient in cocoa is theobromos, the food of the gods. (Read Kage Baker's COMPANY books for reports on how theobromos affects immortals.) A thick squirt always starts my day. And your citation leads me into a rant I was thinking of mere minutes ago, as I broke-in a new electric teapot and brewed the thick hot ginger tea I'm now sipping.

What does the electric do; keep it warm enough ?

 

[Hypoxia]

What does the electric do; keep it warm enough ?

No, I just usually boil water with my locale's cheap electricity rather than pricey propane or smoky / ashy wood. I'll even microwave if I'm reusing the tea-bag or -ball, like with an especially pungent tea, or if I want to extract every last joule of flavour (I know, joules are heat, not flavour -- I don't have a simple all-encompassing unit of measurement there) or gram of thiene / caffeine. No, to keep the brews warm, I use Chinese enamel or celadon teacups with lids.

EDIT: I make no claims to tea connoisseurship. Subtle teas do not reach me -- I know, I've tried. "Perfect' tea -- meh. Gimmee the sledgehammer.

 

[3113]

What does the electric do; keep it warm enough ?

Electric tea pots an do all sorts of things now. As different teas have different ideal temps for brewing, such kettles can bring up the water to just that temp. And then, yes, they'll keep it warm.

Here's a description of one sort:

Perfect tea at the touch of a button. The ultimate tea brewer lowers tea leaves into the water when it reaches the perfect temperature, then lifts leaves out after the ideal steeping time.

Features presets for five tea varieties and three brewing strengths. Remove the brewing basket to use the kettle alone—a keep-warm feature holds water at 160°F for up to an hour.

If you really are a tea connoisseur, pots like these are the way to go.

 

[someoneyouknow]

See I heard-for most of RI- a total of 10" between today and Tuesday. Supposedly about 3" tonight then a stoppage then more tomorrow and throughout the night.

I was fortunate in the time I spent in RI during school I never had to endure any snow. I think we had some flurries but that was it, and even that I'm not sure about because it's been so long.

Also, I know it's a New England kind of thing to be nice and share, but please, there is absolutely no reason you folks need to share this with those us further south. You are more than welcome to it all.

 

[Hypoxia]

When I hear 'snow' I first think of my time in upstate New York (between Rochester and Syracuse) and "lake-effect snow". Nasty stuff. Or I think of a couple winters ago when I had thirty-foot drifts around my place here at 4k ft in the central Sierra Nevadas below Lake Tahoe. This hour, I'm getting an inch of rain here, which means a foot of white stuff above 7k ft and a couple feet in the crests over 10k ft. That's the precip in ONE HOUR. Yes, the atmosphere was solid water. It only means I won't drive over Kit Carson Pass to get to Tahoe or Reno NV today while this Pineapple Express rages. (The temp here is over 50f.) Damn, gale-force gusts just knocked over a 200-foot Douglas-Fir next door. Good thing it missed the houses.

 

[CaveCat12401]

When I hear 'snow' I first think of my time in upstate New York (between Rochester and Syracuse) and "lake-effect snow". Nasty stuff. Or I think of a couple winters ago when I had thirty-foot drifts around my place here at 4k ft in the central Sierra Nevadas below Lake Tahoe. This hour, I'm getting an inch of rain here, which means a foot of white stuff above 7k ft and a couple feet in the crests over 10k ft. That's the precip in ONE HOUR. Yes, the atmosphere was solid water. It only means I won't drive over Kit Carson Pass to get to Tahoe or Reno NV today while this Pineapple Express rages. (The temp here is over 50f.) Damn, gale-force gusts just knocked over a 200-foot Douglas-Fir next door. Good thing it missed the houses.

You sure know how to do winter!!
I remember well lake effect snows off Oswego!

 

[Hypoxia]

You sure know how to do winter!!
I remember well lake effect snows off Oswego!

It's been a mini-winter here, only a couple splashes of wet weather spiced with Sacramento smog. It's not good; California needs LOTS of wet weather to refill low reservoirs. Let's do some rain dances, folks. Cue the drums.

That IS good since it means we made the right choice when we didn't buy a generator. Being snowed in/out for some weeks a couple years ago scared us. But we feared that, like a couple decades before, we'd buy a genny after a disaster but never use it because the system got fixed and the juice stayed up.

Yes, snow off the Finger Lakes can be as bad as off Erie and Ontario.

I'll admit a prejudice: snow sucks. I'm third-generation Los Angeles and we don't have fucking snow in the streets there. Snow was that stuff on the two-mile-high mountaintops just north and east of town. Snow was OK to look at as long as I didn't have to actually step in the crap. And when I spent winters in New York (city and upstate) and Kansas (where it's always either too hot and too windy or too cold and too windy) I took my California attitude with me. I knew it -- snow sucks.

I am thinking of Guatemala right now. Sunshine...

 

[Over_Red]

Tell me about it.

My neighborhood is buried. I shoveled out from two blizzards and bam, here's a massive three-day storm.

I had to dig out my mailbox. It's piled so high in front of my porch that when I turned my snowblower to the front walk, there was a mini-avalanche and it got buried. I had to dig out my snowblower.

Mother Nature is mocking me.

 

[JackLuis]

Tell me about it.

My neighborhood is buried. I shoveled out from two blizzards and bam, here's a massive three-day storm.

I had to dig out my mailbox. It's piled so high in front of my porch that when I turned my snowblower to the front walk, there was a mini-avalanche and it got buried. I had to dig out my snowblower.

Mother Nature is mocking me.

Laughed out loud at that!

This is why I live in La La Land, though it is damned dry here.

 

[Hypoxia]

I had to dig out my snowblower.

I sometimes tell this story: A friend from the north country (Minnesota, I think) decided FUCK IT. They tied their snowblower to their automobile's roof and drove south. When people pointed and asked, "What's that?" it was time to stop.

 

[PennLady]

LOL Like that story.

We don't have snow but we have ice. I could probably skate on our driveway at the moment. Hopefully it melts a bit during the 2-hour delay before school starts.

 

[SandraMustard]

Jack here, using Sandy's account to post a story because I'm lazy.

Growing up in Chicago, the average forty-inches of snow per year was enough to mean everyone without teenage sons owned snowblowers (or paid the price of one for someone else to remove snow). My first machine was inherited from my father when he passed and I bought his house - just in time to see consecutive winters with record-setting accumulations.

The winter of 1978-79 had incredible 88 inches of snow, most of it coming in December and January. As happens, everyone's driveway had over 6 feet of snow piled at each side making backing out a dangerous endeavor. The highway department decided to rectify this by sending a road-grader down the streets, its blade set 30 inches off the ground and protruding several feet to the side, chopping off the mountains. With the driveways impassable, everyone worked hours to clear the mess - and the vision-blocking peaks were right back.

 

[JackLuis]

Guess What?

It's WINTER!


It's still winter in New England. More on the flipside.

Boston, which has been buried by a series of snowstorms in recent weeks, is set to dip below zero early Monday, and there is an "outside chance" the same will happen in New York for the first time since 1994.

"Stepping outside, it will be quite a shock to the system," Palmer warned. "A lot of people will have never experienced cold that bad, especially in an urban heat island like New York City."

The blast of cold air will be riding on the back of a weekend storm expected to impact from Maine to Philadelphia and as far west as the Great Lakes and Ohio.

Starting Saturday, parts of northern New England could see more than a foot of snow through Monday evening. Boston, whose recent winter weather has been "virtually unprecedented in modern times" according to The Weather Channel, could be in for more than six inches.

"It's going to be a pretty significant storm," Palmer said.

High winds could damage buildings and power lines across coastal Main and Massachusetts, roads conditions are set to deteriorate, and airport cancellations are likely in the region, The Weather Channel said.

Low 70's in La La Land this weekend.

 

[Hypoxia]

Low 70's in La La Land this weekend.

Only a couple degrees cooler up here at 4000 ft in the central Sierra Nevadas. The eastern USA really is a vast wasteland, isn't it? Take Pennsylvania. Please.

 

[R. Richard]

I am thinking of Guatemala right now. Sunshine...

I'm currently in Belize, on a work assignment. Last night it got down to 17 degrees Centigrade (62.6 degrees F.) The high was 27 degrees C (80.6 degrees F.)

 

[_Lynn_]

Not New England, but we have that nasty cold stuff here, too. Wind gusts over 50MPH. Current windchill at -8 but dropping to 15 to 35 below zero tonight. Whiteouts, with highways closed.

 

[Hypoxia]

I'm currently in Belize, on a work assignment. Last night it got down to 17 degrees Centigrade (62.6 degrees F.) The high was 27 degrees C (80.6 degrees F.)

Ah, Belize. I've stayed in Orange Walk, Cayo / San Ignacio, and Belmopan, which has to be the cruddiest capitol city I've ever seen. BTW I got there just after a stay at Tikal. The scene at the pyramids got exciting when military choppers and truckloads of troops roared in. Seems that all the presidents of the Central American republics were having a little confab there that weekend. So we're sitting on the cottage's stoop and guys in cammo carrying AK's are running through the brush a few yards away. Happy vacation, folks. At least there was no snow. Not the water kind, anyway.

 

[lovecraft68]

Started snowing here two hours ago they are calling for 4-8 between today and tomorrow night, but oif it stays with what its doing now there will be more than that.

I have the six foot driveway drifts Jack is talking about above...

 

[Zeb_Carter]

The sun is shining and the temp is 75f...I'm lovin' the global warming.

How that working out for you snowbound people.

 

[3113]

The sun is shining and the temp is 75f...I'm lovin' the global warming.

Not working out for me! 81f! Who wants it that hot on Valentine's Day?