Some New Englanders are fed up with winter as more snow is on the way

Just as Worcester is recovering from the late January storm, which brought its tenth largest snowfall on record, the forecast calls for more potential storms this week.

None of the storms are forecasted to be devastating, but the idea of more snow piling on top of the already dirty, crusty, old snow is exhausting to some. 

"Ugh, it sucks," joked WPI student Landon Newton. 

He was in the process of shoveling his car – which he clearly hadn't driven in some time – out of some very dense snow.

"I'm from Kansas so I've never seen snowstorms like this," Newton said.

Romeo Gomez got creative and hand-scooped the salt-sand combination from the Department of Public Works into a grocery bag to bring home to prepare for the potential rain-snow storm Wednesday night. 

"I'm like, 'When is the groundhog going to come [back] out?'" he said. "We're going to have to stack [the snow] up somewhere, find a place. I know for sure where my mom lives, it's going to be like a mountain."

Dirty, icy snow piles

Signs of a dreary winter are evident all over the city – in piles of dirty, icy plowed snow, stools set out as space savers, and fire hydrants blocked by mounds of ice.

Still, for some like Phil Bolduc, this weather is magic. 

"I love cross country skiing and we are running a cross country ski course up at Green Hill this year and it's going so well because we've had so much snow," he said, describing this winter as "the best in 11 years."

Worcester Public Works Commissioner John Westerling said the city is ready for the next storms, but he's optimistic that they won't have a huge impact. 

"Pavement temperatures are high enough that it will probably melt as soon as it falls, but we've got crew standing by with plows and with salt just in case," he said.

Plow driver shortage

Another familiar challenge this season? Finding enough plows. 

"Just as the city is challenged finding drivers, a lot of the private contractors who may have had six or eight trucks on with the city in the past have got four and five trucks [this year] so it's a challenge for everybody," he said.

A citywide parking ban is in effect, and many city garages are free for use to encourage people to get their cars off the streets to help the plows. 

During the last storm, the city issued around 1,000 parking tickets and towed around 300 cars, creating a huge challenge for plow drivers.