The City Was Spared Snow Damage

This snowman family didn't make it to Halloween

This is what the snow looked like on Monday morning in the city.  Sure, we got snow Saturday night, but it wasn’t major and it melted by late Sunday. 

Thankfully around Cambridge and Somerville we were spared for the most part the damage to the trees that I feared when I heard the forecast.  Heavy snow is a disaster when the leaves are on the trees.  The trees aren’t structured to bear the weight of collected snow on their leaves.

While I breathed a sigh of relief, I couldn’t let myself think of the devastation outside the city. It was easy to lose track of just how bad it was – until you saw the school closings for Monday.  Just 20 minutes or so out of the city and students in town after town were treated to a snow day on Halloween – Acton, Bedford, Woburn, Medfield – the list went on and on and on.  Clearly things were not good if schools couldn’t open on Monday – and were still closed on  Tuesday in some towns.

Driving through Arlington on Tuesday to visit broker open houses (we real estate agents live the good life – several days a week we get to tour properties newly listed for sale and get treated to multiple lunches) we came across many downed branches and broken trees.  It was a terrible sight.

I can only imagine it’s much, much worse the further west or north you drive.  Many homes and businesses remain without power.  The thought of how many trees Massachusetts lost is heartbreaking.

Our tree canopy has really taken a beating in the last year or two – drought, tornado, tropical storm and now this.  One has to wonder what the landscape will look like in the coming years as the climate continues to change.

Categories: Living Here
Tags: Trees

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011 at 9:10 am and is filed under Living Here. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1. Denise Hamlin said at November 2nd, 2011 at 1:58 pm

   I’m glad you were spared major destruction in your area Liz. We had blue skies and temps in the 70’s yesterday in Iowa City. I can well imagine it’s hard for you to think about the devastation just 20 minutes away from where you live. It’s even harder for us to imagine that devastation as we reach almost record temps in the opposite direction!

   Climate change is definitely bringing around some weird weather patterns.

2. Liz said at November 2nd, 2011 at 10:45 pm

   Hi Denise ~ 70s sounds lovely! Perfect in fact. Happy to have sun and the 50s here I guess. I caved and turned on the heat a few days ago.

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