Another winter Monday in Boston: Walking down the street toward the subway station

Even my dearest friends who read this blog are probably tiring of this, but I must write again of the weather! Here in Boston, we’re getting pounded with another 20 inches or so of snow, our third major storm over the past 15 or so days. The city is once again in shutdown mode, and the white stuff keeps piling up.

This is the third Monday in a row that my classes have been cancelled, and for me the novelty of snow days may be forever gone, er, at least for a while. Anyway, I decided that this would be a good day to go to my office and get some work done. Encouraged by online postings that my subway line was experiencing only “moderate delays,” I bundled up and trudged over to the subway, a/k/a the “T” (shorthand for Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority).

The lies they tell: At this point it has been at “3 min” for 20 minutes with no announcements

You see the electronic sign in the photo above? I’ve noticed something about it, in any kind of weather. When it ticks down to 3 minutes, time according to the T stops in its, uh, tracks. It may stay at 3 minutes for a couple of minutes, maybe 5 minutes, maybe a bit longer. This time, however, it stayed at 3 minutes for over 20 minutes, with no public address announcement informing us of extended delays. I got the message and decided that riding the T today was not a prudent option.

I’ve spent most of my life in parts of the country where snowfall is par for the course, but I cannot recall being hit in three successive weeks with storms that, standing alone, would be regarded as the signature event of a more normal winter. This has been a remarkable stretch of weather, and I’m sure we’ll be sharing stories of the winter of 2015 for many years to come.