When I got up this morning at 7:30, the temperature on our outside thermometer read -4.0F. At 8:30, it’s reading +2.7F. That’s without wind chill factored in, of course. Inside, it’s a little over +60F, which feels quite chilly. Our hot water baseboard heat doesn’t work all that well when it gets really cold outside, which is a sad irony. We have to get our landlord to send someone over to bleed the excess air out of the system when it gets like this. We can’t do it ourselves because that part is in a locked closet. *sigh*

We were just watching the ***NECN|http://www.boston.com/news/necn/*** forecast, and they showed a snow forecast map for tonight – Beverly is in the colored band that is forecast to get 24+ inches of snow! It’s almost as much as last year’s ***nor’easter|http://prwdot.org/archives/001506.html***. We’ll keep you posted on how it turns out. 🙂 Hopefully we won’t be getting any ***WIDESPREAD UNPLOWABLE GIANT BLOCKS OF GRANITE|http://www.boston-online.com/common/004451.html*** …

Update At Noon
As of noon, the outside temperature has reached 14.7 degrees. Light flakes of snow have started to fall in Beverly. Found this post here, getting into online gaming.

Update At 2:30 PM
The outside temperature is 16 degrees. There is still some light snow falling, but this is just ‘ocean effect’ snow, and not part of the actual impending storm. The National Weather Service has issued a ***blizzard warning|http://www.crh.noaa.gov/data/forecasts/showsigwx.php?warnzone=MAZ007&warncounty=MAC009&local_place1=Beverly&product1=BLIZZARD+WARNING*** for most of eastern Mass, in effect from 5 p.m. today to 6 p.m. tomorrow. Here’s what we can expect in Beverly, according to the NWS:

qqq|THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM WILL OCCUR TONIGHT AND MUCH OF SUNDAY MORNING. SNOW WILL LIKELY FALL AT THE RATE OF 3 INCHES PER HOUR FOR SEVERAL HOURS OVERNIGHT. … ALONG THE COAST…WIND GUSTS BETWEEN 60 AND 70 MPH ARE EXPECTED LATE TONIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING. … THE WINDS LIKELY WILL ALSO TRIGGER SCATTERED POWER OUTAGES NEAR THE COAST…AND TO A LESSER EXTENT INLAND. THE SNOW WILL LIKELY BE OF A SOMEWHAT WETTER CONSISTENCY…AND THUS CREATE THE RISK FOR EVEN MORE WIDESPREAD POWER OUTAGES. … IN ADDITION…THE COLD TEMPERATURES AND STRONG WINDS WILL CAUSE WIND CHILLS BETWEEN 10 AND 20 BELOW LATE TONIGHT. THIS WILL ADD TO THE DANGER FOR ANY ONE WHO VENTURES OUTDOORS TONIGHT. … TOTAL ACCUMULATIONS WILL BE ON THE ORDER OF 20 TO 30 INCHES…WITH
AMOUNTS AS HIGH AS 3 FEET POSSIBLE.|qqq

There’s just something about the NWS writing their warnings in ALL CAPS that makes it seem just that much more dramatic. We have plans to go out to dinner and a movie with some friends tonight, and at the moment I don’t think we’ll be calling it off. After all, we’re supposed to be hardy New Englanders – what’s a few feet of snow between friends?

Update at 9:30 PM
The temperature outside is 23.5F. There are 3.5 inches of fresh snow on our back door step, and I had shoveled away about 2.0 inches previously today, so that’s about 5.5 inches total thus far. The snow is supposed to continue late into the day tomorrow. Here’s an update from the NWS:

qqq|Amounts as high as 3 feet possible. The most vulnerable locations
for 30 inches or more of snow are Essex… Plymouth… Norfolk and
Barnstable counties in Massachusetts and Providence County in Rhode
Island.|qqq

Essex County – that’s us! Our friends chickened out and didn’t want to drive all the way to Danvers to see a movie, so instead we all watched ***Spy Game|http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0266987/*** on DVD here and had dinner at ***Siam Delight|http://www.nvo.com/siamdelight***. It’s all good.