And now, we hunker

The snowblower is in the garage, and the shovels are nearby.

The gas cans — even though they’re actually plastic — are full. The salt for cleaning ice from the driveway is at the ready.

The grocery shopping is done.

Yes, a snowstorm is on its way.

Now, we wait.

 

Depending on which one you believe, reports say we’re going to get between eight and 16 inches of snow, with possible sleet or freezing rain on top. My family and friends in New York could be hit with 20.

And, as always, the local news is checking off all the boxes in its pre-storm coverage: footage from public works facilities featuring piles of snow and sand, warnings from the governor, talk of people rushing to buy shovels, snowblowers and grocery staples.

And this is in Massachusetts, where snow isn’t exactly shocking. I can’t imagine pre-storm coverage in a place where it rarely snows.

The big concern, as always, will be the driveway. It’s long and steep, and it’s always slick in the middle.

Given that we live on a side road off a side road, the plows are actually pretty good about doing our street. The only problem is that with a few hundred yards between our driveway and the neighbors’, we get a lot of snow dumped on the top of our driveway, and unless the snowfall is light and fluffy, it jams up the snowblower.

Maybe I’ll make my millions by inventing a snowplow that moves the snow off the road with none of it falling off the side and into driveways.

My wife has found the lack of snow so far to be ominous, because it reminds her of the winter of 2014-2015, another year where there was very little snow through the end of January.

We’ve actually had an easy time of it so far. There was a storm of about six inches in November, but that was about it.

Even that, though, was enough to break my snowblower. Because the snow was heavy and wet, it kept jamming the blades, mean I had to constantly clean them off and restart it.

Because I don’t always know my own strength, I wound up yanking the cord out. It’s fixed now. We’ll see how it goes.

My wife has found the lack of snow so far to be ominous, because it reminds her of the winter of 2014-2015, another year where there was very little snow through the end of January.

But when it started, it didn’t stop for an entire month.

Compared to some people we know, we had it easy — our roof stayed intact, and we had minimal dripping inside the house, mostly caused by an existing hole in the siding we hadn’t known about until it rained on top of the snow — but it seemed like it would never end.

However, that can’t happen again … right?