Before we moved to Marblehead, my partner warned me about New England winters. They’re tough, she said. Watch out.
Please, I thought. How bad can a New England winter be? In Wyoming, wintertime temps regularly go subzero and the wind routinely whips snow up to sixty and seventy mph. Ever been in a ground blizzard? That’s when such a wind rears up on a clear day, and blows the snow and ice so hard eye-level visibility deteriorates to nothing. Meanwhile, there’s a clear blue sky overhead. During January in Wyoming we call that “Tuesday.”
The first two winters here in Marblehead: not too bad at all. There was enough snow to stick two, maybe three times. The wind barely rose above a breeze. Many wintertime days were downright pleasant. My partner kept telling me, just you wait, but I confess, I got to thinking that these New England winters were going to be a piece of cake.
Well. Let us just say that the winter of 2024-25 has been a beast of a different feather. As we all experienced, it got cold early and then for some reason or other, didn’t stop. The snow came. The wind came. (For many, many days the wind came.) And I learned about this thing called ice dams.
We have gutters in Wyoming but what we don’t have are ice dams. It gets tremendously cold, sure, but within a day or two, the chinook wind generally comes breezing in. The snow and ice melts and/or blows away (Refer to the aforementioned ground blizzards.) Poof. Gone. Like it never happened.
Unlike the situation in Marblehead, where the snow and ice here hangs around like Bill Murray in Groundhog’s Day, day after day the same. Creating ice dams in the gutters which in turn create leaks into the interior of your house. My high plains mind could not comprehend this concept until a wall in my home office developed a weeping problem. My partner nodded knowingly and told me to check out the gutter.
So I crawled up on the roof and examined the solid blocks of ice to be found there. Crawled back down the ladder to retrieve a hammer and proceeded to break the ice dams up and toss them into the snow drifts below.
Did I mention the snowdrifts? Because did we ever have them. I don’t mean the kind that blow up like they do out west, mini-mountains created by the wind that resemble sand dunes. I mean the artificial kind, created by repeatedly shoveling out a long driveway. After all, in a winter like this, the snow simply doesn’t melt. So when several storms hit in the same week, I learned that you just pile the new snow on the old snow. Naturally, this creates drifts taller than some people are tall as you struggle to preserve enough space for cars to pull in and out of the drive.
This took a team effort — the whole family out in the driveway shoveling. Good bonding, so far as I’m concerned! Good exercise, as well. That said, as I type these words, it has somehow warmed up to 50 degrees outside and yet the snow drifts remain. I hope they melt in time for baseball to start. I have a friend out here who played baseball at a New England college. He told me that this time of year, they’d simply push the snow off towards the bleachers and then take some fielding practice. Now that’s hardy.
The other fun feature of a real New England winter I’ve learned about has been slush. Of course, this is what the roads are composed of this time of year, a gray slurry that turns the roads, sidewalks and curbs into an Impressionist painting. And then the salt trucks come along, and your car gets caked in enough salt to preserve fish on the bumper.
All of which is to say, I have received a proper, wintery comeuppance. And, I’m told, this winter can’t hold a candle to 2015, let alone some of the other legendary long winters. I suppose as my tenure in Marblehead grows, I’ll get to experience a few of those myself. I’ll keep my snow shovel at the ready.
If you’ve got an idea upon which I can embark for a Marblehead First Time, drop me a line at court.merrigan@gmail.com.
Court Merrigan
Wyoming transplant Court Merrigan is a new Marblehead resident. His column “My Marblehead First Time” appears regularly in the Current.
