If you live in New England, there are some things you simply are responsible for knowing. One major subject of required New England knowledge is winter weather.
1) Very regularly, at certain times of the year, snow will fall. Often lots of it. It will sometimes snow sideways, and occasionally upside-down. You can’t complain about it – you chose to live here.
2) Plastic shovels with plastic handles that go for about $5 at CVS cannot pick up wet snow, which accounts for at least half of New England snow. All these shovels do is snap to assist you in throwing out your back quickly.
3) Sedans with two-wheel drive and no snow tires are useless in heavy snow. They provide about as much traction as a fucking banana.
4) At the end of a major storm, hours after you are done shoveling your sidewalk and driveway, a large plow will drive down your street and push an ungodly amount of ice and snow back onto your property, effectively sealing you and your loved ones from the rest of your community. You need to get up an hour early before work the next day to clear this out. You’ll need a big, sturdy, two-stage gas-powered snowblower for this. Otherwise you need a pickaxe and a great medical plan.
5) Electric, cord-powered snowblowers are cute. Plan on using one during one light dusting, and then smashing it to bits on the ground in a Hulk rage when a real snowstorm hits.
6) Street corners are where plows and front-end loaders deposit giant piles of snow and ice during a major storm. If you live on a corner and you try to clear a pathway, it will be much like trying to cut a mountain pass. Since you probably don’t have access to dynamite, plan on not being able to walk through there for a few weeks. Likewise, if you construct a flimsy fence around your properly, consider it a disposable fence, because it’s going to get smushed the first time the plows push all the snow onto your corner.
7) You need to brush *all* the snow off the roof of your car before driving. If you don’t, you will leave a James Bond-like smoke cloud of snow in your wake, causing a long, angry line of traffic behind your lazy, useless rear end. Police officers will also pull you over and ticket you for this. Everyone behind you will cheer out the window as they drive by your pulled-over ass.
8) Coastal areas flood. A lot. Even if you have that cool, 4-wheel-drive Jeep that the commercials show blasting through snow and rain, you’re going to stall out and become an island if you try to drive through a flooded road. If you want to drive in deep water, install a custom air intake snorkel on your truck, or just do what you’re supposed to do and stay home and get drunk like the rest of us.
9) You do not park in an on-street parking spot that you didn’t personally clear out, unless you want your tires slashed. You will get only one warning from the person who dug it out, in the form of a cheap kitchen chair, a cracked street cone, or a milk crate.
10) You are required by law to shovel your sidewalk. If you can’t, hire somebody to do it, or call friends and relatives to assist you. If you choose not to do it you are telling your neighbors that you don’t want to be part of the neighborhood, and openly welcome a few bricks to be thrown through your windows late at night. Which will happen.
And the most important one:
11) You are responsible for shoveling out the fire hydrant near your home. It is not solely the responsibility of the person whose home is directly behind the hydrant. Clear a good three-foot circle around it so firefighters can rescue you quickly, or plan on watching them shovel the hydrant as you sweat from the second floor of your burning house, screaming for help.
Please tell these things to any friends or neighbors who are new to the area so that we all spend more time together at the local pub, and not at the local courthouse. Or funeral parlor.
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