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Dangers, Frustrations and Snow Keep Piling Up in New England

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The snow was deep in Joy Street in Boston on Sunday. Another 20 inches of snow over the weekend added to the seven feet that had already fallen this season. Brian Snyder/Reuters


BOSTON — Leaden skies tested the patience and sanity of winter-weary New Englanders once again over the weekend, unleashing more than two feet of new snow on parts of the region. It was the latest installment in a relentless string of storms that have blended, one into the next, enveloping every car and every home so that nothing has a distinct shape anymore; the landscape is just one seamless blanket of white.
It is hard to remember when the snows began, and even harder to imagine when they might end. There are almost no humans to be seen outdoors, just the blowing, drifting sheets of whiteness, punctuated by an occasional beeping yellow plow pushing its catch up against mounds already eight feet high, 10 feet high, even 15 feet high, further burying long-submerged cars that now seem lost forever in a frosty version of Pompeii.
A television news show flickered with images sent in by viewers, taken inside homes where the snow had piled up above windows and entombed the occupants.


“It reminds me of ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ when Pa walked to the barn from his second-story window,” chirped the anchorwoman.



SLIDE SHOW|6 Photos

Snow Buries Boston Again

Snow Buries Boston Again

Dominick Reuter/European Pressphoto Agency

But for others, the bleak elegy of James Joyce has crept to mind: “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
Indeed, with 20 inches in Boston over the weekend on top of the seven feet already on the ground, the mayor, Martin J. Walsh, had the air of Job about him as he spoke at a news conference of fresh plagues visited upon the land: winds up to 55 miles per hour, temperatures “dangerously low,” an increase in carbon monoxide poisonings, snow-laden roofs reaching the breaking point, warnings to clear out snow-clogged heating vents and tailpipes and, as if that were not enough, a heads-up to beware of falling icicles.
“As you shovel the snow, as you move the snow, the snow is going to come back,” he warned grimly of the howling winds that were swirling over newly shoveled walkways and erasing any sign of human effort. “It will look like we didn’t plow.”
The snow tapered off midday Sunday, but in the late afternoon the National Weather Service gave residents something else to contemplate: a “wind chill warning,” with “dangerous wind chills of 20 to 30 below zero later tonight into Monday morning.”
Boston has passed several milestones. The new accumulations mean that this is among the snowiest winters ever, in third place with 95.7 inches. The record of 107.6 inches, set in 1995-96, is less than a foot away.
“Are you snowbound and weary of numbers?” asked one television weatherman. “Not to the point where we’re Jack Nicholson, but it’s getting to that point,” he said, referring to the actor’s descent into madness in “The Shining” as snow trapped his family in a hotel.
Boston’s rattletrap subway system, troubled by frozen switches, power failures, spontaneous fires and monumental delays, has been on and off for the last three weeks; on Sunday, it was completely shut down. Officials announced on Sunday that it would resume limited operations Monday.
The police ferried emergency medical personnel to hospitals. Homeless shelters were overflowing with refugees from the sidewalks, which have been given over to snow mounds. The city is trying to ease tensions in South Boston by temporarily making the streets one-way — the mounds have narrowed traffic to one lane, and as cars were meeting in the middle of a block, no one was backing up.
“People are frustrated. People just want this to end,” the mayor said.
Since late January, the city has spent more than $33 million dealing with the snow, way beyond the $18 million that it had budgeted; the weekend’s delivery cost an additional $7 million.
The storms have cost the state an estimated $1 billion in lost sales and productivity in the last three weeks. In an attempt to encourage retail spending, Gov. Charlie Baker officially extended Valentine’s Day — which fell on Saturday, as the latest storm was cranking into high gear — to “Valentine’s Week.”
Expenses are soaring for everyone, including churches. The Rev. Dr. Christian Brocato, rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Cambridge, said about 15 people made it Sunday morning. Many other churches canceled their services.
“It’s costing a fortune,” Dr. Brocato said of plowing and having to hire someone to climb a ladder and use a handsaw to cut down the icicles. The continuous snows keep pushing him back to “square one,” he said, and trying to plan around the weather has created its own problems.
“We had a big Mardi Gras celebration prepared for Tuesday, but because of the snow, we moved that to this morning, with king cakes from down South,” he said Sunday as he shoveled out his car. “Then of course we had to cancel that.”
Mayor Walsh expressed relief that Monday was a holiday. “Take it as an opportunity to dig out around your homes,” he advised. “God knows how many weeks we’ll be doing this.”

A version of this article appears in print on February 16, 2015, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Dangers, Frustrations and Snow Keep Piling Up in New England. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe