I bet many of my blog readers have heard about the huge blizzard, dubbed "Nemo," that just hit New England. Thanks to all of you who have expressed concern. We are fine, but we are shoveling ourselves out of a lot of snow. I haven't yet found an official statistic for how much snow we've received here in Newport, RI -- the snow only stopped falling a few hours ago, after over 36 hours of continuous snowfall -- but I can tell you from my own exhaustive shoveling efforts that it is somewhere between two and three FEET of snow. That is an incredible amount for coastal New England! In my neighborhood, we lost power for 23 hours, which is more than uncomfortable in 20-degree weather... it's downright dangerous. I cranked the heat in my house before the power went, because I expected to lost electricity, and when we lost power at 10pm last night, it was 71 degrees in my house. When we regained power at 9pm tonight, it was 47 degrees in my house. I was reading with hat, coat, and gloves on - by the fire in our fireplace - when the joyous beeps of appliances restarting on the electric grid resounded throughout our quiet house.
We've lost power for longer during hurricanes, recently during Hurricane Sandy, but I've not lost power at this very cold time of year before. I was starting to really worry about my elderly cats. Fortunately there was PLENTY OF SNOW to stuff inside the coolers that we employed to try to save the food from our powerless refrigerator! We were very lucky and didn't lose any food, and also didn't sustain any damage to our house, though two very large trees in our yard have come down from the weight of the snow. Don't know which was louder last night, the crack of a tree trunk breaking, or the horrible noise of a transformer blowing out when the whole few blocks lost power!
I hope the scariness of the storm is behind us. I wrote a few nice letters yesterday when the snowfall was just pretty, and the power hadn't gone out yet. As I noted in a tweet on my Twitter stream yesterday, I love to write letters in snowfall, but once we lose power, I get too nervous to write letters, and have trouble doing anything but reading. So it's been a very nervous day, and I'm beyond relieved to be back on the grid, with my furnace pumping heat into the cold house again, and hope to be able to relax into some more letters tomorrow.
I took a few snow photos today, and maybe when I have more energy and less anxiety tomorrow, I'll post some of 'em. First I've got to finish shoveling, and dig out my car.
I hope everyone in Blizzard Nemo's path is warm and safe, and happily writing letters instead of worrying about heat and electricity!
