After the hubbub of two holiday weekends in a row it suddenly seems like the dead of winter. Not much to report. The breach is staying firmly closed. Comcast has hooked up a bunch of houses. Their subcontractor has trenched in miles of fiber optic cable. The highway department has been taking down dead trees along the main roads. The newly-seeded grass started to grow on the shoulders down at the ferry point. It’s pretty quiet around here. I plan to move the “Yield to Ferry Traffic” sign out of the middle of the parking lot so the snowplow will have free rein. Really quiet.

The quest for improved cell phone service continues. The town sent out a questionnaire looking for guidance about which solutions to pursue. The results of the survey are posted on the town website. Most of the responses are predictable but there is high entertainment value as well. Chappaquiddickers are a diverse bunch. I wouldn’t want to venture a guess as to how or when this issue will be solved.

The December heat wave that we had been enjoying finally came to an end right around New Year’s Day. Up until then I hadn’t even drained the outdoor shower. Given another week of warmth I’m afraid that the crocuses would have sprouted and bloomed. I believe that we will see ice in the harbor again this winter. Late last January I remember commenting that if the harbor hadn’t frozen over yet it probably wouldn’t. By the end of February we were scooping foot-thick ice floes out of the ferry run with an excavator.

I look at the Intellicast weather map probably two dozen times a day — more often when foul weather is on the way or on top of us. I like to avoid surprises and stay one step ahead of the storms. The snowfall this past Monday was so light and fluffy that just waving a broom a few inches above the porch sent the flakes swirling away. If you watched the weather radar while the snow fell you may have been baffled as to why it was snowing just over the Cape, the Islands and along the shore between Cohasset and Pocasset no further inland than Route 3. But the weatherman predicted it and that’s what it did.

This event reminds me of one very cold and very starry winter night many decades back when only downtown Hyannis got several inches of snow. Looking over at the Cape it appeared that there was a thick pall of smoke over that town brightly lit from beneath. I was certain that they were dealing with a very big fire. Getting home after driving the nighttime ferry runs I turned on the TV to see the weatherman expressing his amazement at how localized that snowfall had been. Not a single flake fell anywhere else.

My new favorite feature of the Intellicast website is the visible satellite loop. During the daytime it shows the cloud cover in motion. At sunrise and sunset you can watch twilight race across the surface of the earth. In the summer I look forward to the shade of thick clouds. Even with a hat and sunglasses it’s a challenge to keep out the sun’s rays reflected off of the water. During a dreary winter day you can be heartened that the sun may shine later as you watch the cloud cover move away. The combination of satellite observations, precipitation radar and access to the internet have taken most of the guesswork and surprise out of the forecast.

Many years ago, before the internet, I would get up early to watch the aviation weather on what was the precursor of The Weather Channel. The meteorologists, both male and female, usually had thick glasses, wore business suits, and hardly smiled. Then one day somebody in charge realized how popular the show had become and things changed. The guys took off their jackets and started talking like game show hosts. The gals got their hair done, put on high heels and what looked to me like bridesmaid dresses. Often the outfits were so distracting to me that I’d miss the details and have to hang around for the repeat. It was still good weather reporting, just required more concentration on my part.

Even though snowstorms no longer take us completely by surprise, the blanket of snow glistening in the sun after the skies clear is no less wonderful to me.

Send Chappy news to peter@chappyferry.net.