Snow and Ice

It's been a cold miserable couple of weeks here in New England.
We have had a couple of big snow storms, followed by temperatures in the single digits at night and only in the teens by day. We have a huge pile of snow in the front yard, as you can see from the pictures.


We have also had ice dams on the roof. For the uninitiated, if the roof is warmer than the outside air, then snow melts and flows down to just above the eaves, where the roof is colder. The water freezes, and creates a chunk of ice which causes water to pool behind it, and then to seep under the shingles and into the house. I had a couple of drips in our bedroom, which was bad enough, but I have heard of some people who have had waterfalls down their walls.

Robert was enjoying a trip to San Diego, so a brother from our ward came by and sawed some holes in the dams, and then put socks filled with rock salt in the channels to keep them open. That seems to have done the trick.

Our next project will be to fix the ceiling in the bedroom that got wet, and to get more insulation in the attic so that we're not losing so much heat out the roof. That should help the problem, although I did read that a heavy snow followed by really cold temperatures make the ideal conditions for the formation of ice dams. We haven't had a problem with them before, so maybe this is just a one-time thing. One can only hope.

I had to go into Cambridge the other day, and coming back on the T, our train slowed and stopped for around 5 minutes between Porter and Davis. They finally announced that they were having problems with the brakes, and that it would be resolved shortly. We sat for another 5 minutes, and then the train started moving, but quite slowly. We finally made it to Porter, and then continued on to Alewife, which is the end of the Red Line. However, as soon as we got off in Alewife, they announced that this train was out of service. Now I wonder, were we barreling along at rush hour, underground, on a train that might have had brake failure? Scary thought! I suppose I should be grateful that we didn't have to evacuate in the middle of the tunnel.