Fitchburg 7:28 a.m. Sunday

One of the side effects of being mar­ried to a nurse is that storm or no storm she is expected at work for 6:45.

Got up at 5 and decided that the best move would be to go out the front door, shovel to the street and use the street to access the dri­ve­way and dig out the cars from there (My prop­erty is in an L shape sur­round­ing the house at the corner.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_32084” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“A good early morning’s work”][/​caption]

The first thing I noticed was my sign for Rose­mary Reynolds was gone, buried or blown away who knows?

[cap­tion id=“attachment_32083” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Political sign? What sign?”][/​caption]

The sun was down and I couldn’t see much but by 6 a.m. the dri­ve­way was dug out so me and my neigh­bor could get out if needed. I drove to the front and picked up the wife and headed off.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_32080” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“My front tree”][/​caption]

As soon as I left our neigh­bor­hood (and passed the 5^th street diner still open as always dur­ing storms) we real­ized how lucky we were.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_32081” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Same tree from street”][/​caption]
Our neigh­bor­hood seems to be the only place in sight with power. It was pitch black. At the cor­ner of John Fitch High­way and Sum­mer street there was a large col­lec­tion of trucks and plows con­gre­gated at the park­ing lot where Dutch Kitchen is located. Dur­ing the drive to Key­stone nurs­ing cen­ter we observed trees bent and bro­ken. it was rem­i­nis­cent of the Ice storm 3 years ago as branches lit­tered the side of all the roads.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_32085” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“a tree bends in Leomin­ster”][/​caption]

The wife’s nurs­ing home was on gen­er­a­tor and I was unable to enter the dri­ve­way, I dropped her off and took these pic­tures of the trip home, it was both beau­ti­ful and not a pretty sight.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_32094” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Branches on the side of the road just like the ice storm”][/​caption]

I tried to take some run­ning video but there just wasn’t much light, here is what I managed

At the nurs­ing home

On the Road

I set my cam­era on auto­matic dou­ble shot, opened my dri­vers win­dow and let the cam­era take shots as there was no safe place to stop.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_32089” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“The snow is a grip­ing snow”][/​caption]

Although the roads were fairly empty dri­ving still involved dodg­ing branches in the road and it was time to put the cam­era away.

By the time I got back to the inter­sec­tion at John Fitch all the col­lected trucks and plows were gone as I got to the 5^th street diner I stopped in to check on Tina and Ed

[cap­tion id=“attachment_32095” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Neither rain nor wind nor 14 inches of snow…”][/​caption]

Their home in Lunen­burg was with­out power and the drive in involved dodg­ing wires. I talked to a city worker who had been out since 3:30 p.m. yes­ter­day who stopped in for break­fast before going out again.

The biggest prob­lem he said was the wires, they were not allowed to touch trees in con­tact with wires that had to wait for Uni­tel. The sec­ond prob­lem was the sur­pris­ing num­ber of peo­ple on the road. He sus­pected he would eas­ily be flat out for the rest of the day. With the num­ber of downed wires and trees Uni­tel and the city has their work cut out for them.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_32096” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“A downed wire on Mavrick street”][/​caption]

As the sun rose it was clear things were worse than I had first thought, a tree in my back yard had snapped and the back yard was both impass­able and unsafe

[cap­tion id=“attachment_32097” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“snap goes the tree”][/​caption]

View from the driveway

[cap­tion id=“attachment_32098” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“My back­yard”][/​caption]

From the back door

[cap­tion id=“attachment_32101” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“back yard from back deck”][/​caption]

And the tree in the front that my wife named War­ren (don’t ask me why) wasn’t doing so good either

[cap­tion id=“attachment_32099” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Warron on the ground”][/​caption]

I sus­pect the only rea­son it didn’t snap is my son and I shook some of the snow off last night

Either way as I still have power, the roads are pos­si­ble and any dam­age is min­i­mal I got off very light com­pared to almost every­one else.

There is also an inter­est­ing polit­i­cal angle, in 8 days there is an elec­tion for mayor, the chal­lenger City Coun­selor Joe Solomito had been safely ahead but Mayor Lisa Wong on the basis of a strong per­for­mance in the final debate had closed the gap con­sid­er­ably. This storm and how it is han­dled, fairly or unfairly, could be the make or break point in the elec­tion. As Tip O’Neill always said, all pol­i­tics is local, and that’s par­tic­u­lar­ity if you are with­out power or with downed wires and trees block­ing your way.

Update: Insta­lanche. Hope the increased traf­fic doesn’t tip it over the edge. Remem­ber it hit 80 here just 3 weeks ago.