WINTER CONTINUES

Posted on 12/30/2015 | About Quebec

Winter weather that spun off a series of deadly storms in the Midwest brought the season's first big punch to the Northeast on Tuesday, with snow, sleet and freezing rain greasing roads, sending drivers spinning and keeping people indoors amid sub-freezing temperatures.

It is now truly winter in parts of the Maritimes. Nova Scotia and southeastern New Brunswick are getting dumped on for a second time in three days. Meantime in Quebec, parts of the Montreal area are getting hit with up to 16 inches. It is being blown by a system that brought a mess of snow and freezing rain to Ontario.

Parts of northern New England already had about six inches of snow by early evening, and isolated areas could get 10 inches or more by the time it ends late in the day, according to the National Weather Service. The weather made for a sloppy mess in parts of metro Boston, where memories linger of last winter's record-breaking snowfall. In snow-loving Vermont, Chassidy Byrd, the assistant manager at a gas station and convenience store in Plainfield, said the storm returned the state to a sense of normal.

Without any snow, “it didn't feel like Vermont,” she said. Forecasters said snowfall totals would range from an inch or less in parts of southern New England before turning over to rain and sleet, while northern regions would see more. In central and northern New York, 4 to 8 inches of snow was anticipated. The snow went a long way toward making up for a warm, snowless December in the Northeast where several spots are flirting with record warmth for the month. The temperature topped 60 degrees on Christmas Day in Maine, and normally, Portland would have seen more than a foot of snow by Tuesday.

And what would any story be today without a bit of gratuitous violence and weaponry. In Andover, Massachusetts, police say a man pulled an unloaded gun on a snowplow driver after nearly crashing into the plow. The man's lawyer said his client was attacked first and pulled out the gun in self-defence.