No snow emergency?

[pywaket.livejournal.com]

Anyone have any insight into why the city hasn't declared one? This storm certainly seems to meet the criteria with forecast amounts of 4-8". The closest NWS reports I can find are 4.7" already on the ground in both Winthrop and Logan, and it sure seems like there's more than that out there in front of my house.

ETA: as of 10pm, the city doesn't seem to have plowed any of the roads into, through or out of Davis. From what I could see, Elm, Holland, Highland and Day are untouched, at least near the square (I didn't investigate further), and College was not done all the way to Powderhouse. NWS is saying 5.5" as of 7:30 in Cambridge, and it was still snowing pretty hard at 8:30. I did see a few DPW pickup trucks driving around - not sure what they were doing. No plows or sanders, though.

Given that tomorrow isn't supposed to be above freezing, I suspect the roads are going to be pretty ugly for a bit. Be careful out there, everyone, and please shovel your sidewalks. I saw an older woman almost fall in the middle of the crosswalk between Tedeschi's and the T station entrance. Good thing there were no cars coming at the time.

ETA #2: Just heard a plow go down Kidder at 10:50. Hopefully they're getting out there and finally cleaning this up before it freezes solid (tonight is supposed to be around 20F).

Comments

[ron_newman]

Good question, especially since Medford did declare one.

Cambridge didn't declare one for either storm, as far as I can tell. The Cambridge parts of Orchard and Russell streets were a slippery mess last night.

[gingicat]

WHAT?!

In related news, going from Washington St to McGrath was TERRIFYING by car.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

28 sucked over by Assembly too, but I always assume that's the state's fault for not dealing with it. My commute in Somerville on Somerville-plowed roads was by comparison a picnic.

[geekpixie.livejournal.com]

If you pop on facebook and look at the city of somerville page they give a lot of reasoning for this. Mostly that if they declared it, they'd have had to cancel school, and declare an emergency halfway through a work day. This snow escalated a lot more than they expected ,I'm expecting.

[pywaket.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised. The roads are a mess.

[blacktigr.livejournal.com]

Coming north on the 80 along McGrath across Washington was no picnic.

Big props to the bus driver that got us all safely there.

[pywaket.livejournal.com]

I couldn't find that. Just something about cancelling all after school activities.

Anyway, I hope they plan to do something about the roads - they're a total mess and awfully hard on to manage on foot. The crosswalks are especially treacherous right now. As I noted in my edit above, I saw an older woman almost fall down in the middle of the street right at the T station entrance. Fortunately she was OK.

[pywaket.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'll say one thing for the T - the bus drivers generally do an excellent job driving in the snow. They didn't seem to be having any problems on College, Elm or Holland. As someone who's driven very large vehicles in very bad weather, I can say I'm impressed; it's not an easy task.

[ron_newman]

A plow came down Day Street about a half hour ago. They need to do it again, now that the snow seems to have stopped.

[gruene.livejournal.com]

Snow Emergencies have to be declared in advance of the storm or they're pointless and counterproductive. Imagine if they'd declared one at noon. People would be running how from work and desperately circling for parking spots, all while the roads were untreated and heavy snow was falling!

The forecast called for 3-5 inches, which is just on the cusp of Somerville's standard of "4 or more inches". If they'd declare a snow emergency and it only snowed 2-3 inches, you can bet this forum (or others) would be filled with angry comments about how stupid this was and "how dare the city give them an $100 ticket for a dusting of snow", etc. etc.

As to the lack of plows, same deal. Most plow operators are independent contractors. There was more snow than anticipated, so it took a while to call them up and get them deployed.

[puffy-wuffy.livejournal.com]

We got double-plows on Cedar last night around 9pm. It made me feel loved.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

My weather app said 6-9 inches (and it averages all the other major forecast models), which is what we got.

[irilyth]

> Hopefully they're getting out there and finally cleaning this up before it freezes solid (tonight is supposed to be around 20F

That probably wasn't an issue in this case, because it started and stayed below freezing -- when I shoveled this morning, the snow was light and powdery. You get solid ice when it gets enough above freezing for things to melt, and then drops back below again, right?

[geekpixie.livejournal.com]

As a follow up, I've found interacting with 311 over twitter, facebook, and directly on the phone is far more productive for snow removal and responses to these concerns than posting here, so I hope people did just that!

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

In Cambridge, snow emergencies only affect streets posted as snow emergency routes. Most small streets aren't, including Orchard and Russell.

So the lack of a Cambridge snow emergency made no difference to the quality of plowing on those streets.