The weather in New England never ceases to amaze me. Not because it is that terrible, but because it is so effective at shutting down the area. The truth is, it is not the weather, per se, but the roads. When visiting Boston, people are often afraid to navagate the streets. They are narrow, make hairpin curves, and look at those they are old cow paths. That last point would be because they ARE old cow paths from when cows were considered residents of downtown.
Now I grew up in the warm and pleasant weather of Western New York. This area had blizzards often, schools would close on sunny days because the wind created snow drifts so high that the roads were unpassible and we actually got water spouts over Lake Erie. The ocassional tornado would hit. BUt all in all, life in WNY is good. We lived in the Snow Belts of Lake Erie, to the east of Buffalo. Snow belts are nasty. You can have a 5 mile wide strip of snow storm extending almost 40 miles long, but once you get out of the belt, the sun can be shinning, the birds are singing and you can order a margarita by the pool. IN the snow belt, it can dump 6-12 inches on you in a few hours.
You live with it. It’s part of living in Buffalo and Western New York. It really is only a problem if one needs to get somewhere at a specific time and even then, you just leave an hour early. The difference between Boston and Buffalo seems pretty obvious to me: No body planned Boston. Really!
Go check out a google map of Boston. Then compare it to Buffalo. See the difference? Buffalo was a planned city. Streets are in grids. It is trivial to go from one place to another by multiple routes. In Boston, three major routes (93, 1 and 3) join together in the City. These were recently put underground as part of the "Big Dig". Seriously, who would have ever thought of taking 3 arteries and combining them to a pinch point IN A CITY CENTER and then letting them spread out?
This is why snowstorm freak out those in New England. Is it old here. And the Cows were the urban planners. Each town fends for them selves on the 3 roads that connect to other towns so they can keep traffic moving. It is difficult when the number of routes to travel are low.
And don’t even get me started about the fact that Towns have to clear the state routes! In WNY, the county cleared county roads, the state cleared state roads and the towns and cities did theirs. Here? Each town for themselves!
If you don’t see too many posts, I will be off at a meeting next week. I will try to post at nights, but we will see. And johnny? Yeah, I have a guard at my house…my neighbor!