The weather outside is indeed frightful, but dear God don’t make me finish that lyric.  Today is the second day of Winter Storm Juno, and it was the day Juno attacked. Some of the early day reports suggested the storm wasn’t that bad … well, that’s because the news people were sitting in New York City sipping their warmed chai lattes watching the little discomfort of weather pass them by.  Meanwhile, Juno continued on and put in place a smack down to the rest of New England … so far.

The big numbers from Juno initially is going to be snow fall.  Sometimes you can giggle away the early predictions for storms (weatherman says 6″, but I am sure he is only packing 2″).  The predictions they had here were quite ridiculous too – ranging from 12-36″ in small bands of areas.  Early indications are that this storm is showing some numbers that are quite impressive.

Where I am at in Connecticut right outside of Hartford, they started seeing the flurries in late afternoon, but it really started blowing after midnight.  The snow is nearly stopped here at just about 5PM, but the wind is still blowing and is expected to blow until the morning tomorrow.  When measured at 11am this morning by a trained spotter, Manchester, CT had 17.5″.  I haven’t seen more recent numbers, but there is little doubt that it broke 20″ in this area.

Back home in Boston, they are getting the guts of it.  At 2:45PM, South Boston reported 24.0 inches of snow.  The thing is, Juno is still going on back there.  They are reporting blizzard conditions continuing until at least 11PM, and expecting the snow to end as late as 5AM tomorrow.  Winds along the coast have seen up to 50mph winds, including Nantucket Island who saw a 76mph gust.  If that’s not enough, they are seeing storm surges – rushes of sea water coming up over breakers like they would normally see during hurricanes, but in the freezing conditions it is making evacuations harrowing.

The good news is everyone has taken this very very seriously.  Most states along the east coast issued travel bans.  Connecticut lifted their ban just an hour ago, but few are expected to go running out tonight.  Massachusetts hasn’t hinted about lifting the ban any further east than the far western part of the state.  Boston’s T-Line (subway) has been shut down all day.  Nearly no store is open.  And a sign of the shear Snowpocolpyse this is … Dunkin Donuts remains shut down.

As for me … well, if you caught yesterday’s feed, you know I hunkered down in a hotel with the pup.  That keeps proving to be a really good decision.  The hotel, a Marriott Residence Inn in Manchester, CT, has been brilliant on how they dealt with it.  If you stayed at a Residence Inn, you know that it isn’t a fancy hotel, but it does offer snacks for dinner and a continental/hotel waffle free breakfast – not to mention the usual housekeeping services.  The hotel management, knowing that they still had people here knew they need to have staff on hand — so they put the staff up for the duration of the storm.  It’s becoming a little bit of a bonding moment with all of us, like we are all in this together.  They work to keep the doors clear & the parking lot plowed but that’s just for emergencies only — none of us can go anywhere.  The pup has been challenged to do his business, especially when we got up at 5AM and nothing was cleared yet … and the snow went up past his winkie.  I’ve done some work, kept warm, and tried to talk the pup out of going outside whenever he wanted.  There remains no reason for me to leave the hotel, no reason to plan to leave.

Tomorrow will be a different story.  Tomorrow some of our plants should be opening up, and work should be beginning again. I may need to stick my head into a place here or there.  My preference is to make a run home tomorrow, even though my hotel is booked through Friday, it’s that desire to see what has happened to the place and see if I am coming home to trouble.  Then again, if the roads are still shut down and I have no place in Boston to park my car (no I am not being cute) then I better plan to stay here.

We’ll see what Day 3 brings.