Even before last night’s snowstorm, Old Man Winter had already laid a 50-inch thick blanket of white on Boston so far this winter.
Usually Mother Nature takes pity and sends a little sun to melt some of the snow away, but with this year’s nearly weekly poundings of the white stuff, city officials have had to relocate the snow as the curbside snowbanks grow.
“This has been a tough winter,” said Joanne Massaro, Boston’s commissioner of public works.
So where does it all go? The answer: snow farms.
Boston has six snow farms located throughout the city in neighborhoods like Charlestown, East Boston, South Boston and Roxbury. The “farms” are municipal lots where truckloads of snow are dumped.
In Somerville, one of the densest cities in New England, snow removal has turned tricky. Plows have tried to push snow off of the street to make room for public safety vehicles, but the large amounts of snow have spilled from the curbs back on to the sidewalks, creating an issue for residents who are asked by the city to shovel their sidewalks.
“We’re running out of space,” said Michael Meehan, a city spokesman.
Cambridge officials said they don’t typically relocate snow to snow farms, but with this year’s winter wallop, they’ve been forced to truck it out.
