The past few winters in the Boston area have not been especially awful. Yes, we’ve had a few really cold days and a few nasty storms, but compared to some other years (like 2014-2015, when we had 109” of snow!…or one brutally cold night in 2023 when it hit -10° F, not counting wind chill), winters have been “typical”: some snow, some cold weather, but nothing really terrible. And in 2015, we were on the Harvard campus, which was generator-protected, and paths between buildings were always shoveled so students could get into the lab to care for the birds.

We are now in an apartment, and this year has been dreadful. We’ve had blizzards combined with long stretches of days and nights with wind chills way below zero, so there is no snow melt or chance for roads to get cleared, with drafts in our apartment lowering the temperature, making life in the lab quite difficult for us all!

When Winter Tests Science & Stamina

The issues were, and still are, as I write this…keeping the temperature warm enough for Griffin (whose arthritis flares up if he spends any length of time at less than 68° F), and making sure that our RAs (Research Assistants) can get to lab to feed him, care for him in general, and give him his meds on time (his need for a course of antibiotics for an intestinal issue has overlapped with these horrid weather conditions)! Pictures of the outdoor scenes really don’t show the true mess. We had plans in place, but….

Our first step was to block out drafts. Our building has old windows, which leak. We were too late to get the fancy plastic sheeting most folks use to put over them, so we bought batting used for quilting to cover all our windows. The batting lets in a bit of light, but not all that much. We do have full-spectrum lighting, which helps. And the batting works pretty well, especially when, overnight, we add our light-shielding window curtains (which, thankfully, also block some of the remaining drafts). We also taped up the emergency exit for now with gaffer’s tape, which can quickly and easily be removed, but that eliminated more drafts.

Still, the worst of the craziness began with the first bad snowstorm. Our assistant lab manager closed up the lab the night of the storm, leaving at her normal 8 pm, and had to dig out her car with a shovel borrowed from a stranger because it was already buried. Earlier in the afternoon, our senior lab manager had brought in a blow-up bed to set up in the experiment room (see figure), so she could stay overnight and oversee the space heaters that we knew we’d have to run to keep the temperature up; she left her car in my reserved parking space before the storm hit, thinking she could walk back later on…uh, no, she had to use an Uber. By 10 pm, she was already running those heaters and was up a few times in the night as well.

A Chilly Nightwatch

The RA who opened in the morning was able to get in via public transport, and while she tended to Griffin, my lab manager and post-doc worked on digging the lab manager’s car out. By then, the streets were barely passable; any cars parked on the street were completely covered. My post doc (whose car has an All-Wheel-Drive option!) and who lives in a nearby town, then drove about an hour to pick up the RA who had the afternoon/evening shift, as that was the only way she could get in, and then had to drive her home afterward because there was a second 4”-6” round of snow on top of the almost 2’ that had been previously dumped, and my senior lab manager, again, slept over in lab to run the space heaters on and off to deal with the bitter cold. In between all that, Grif had to be fed, given his antibiotics, supplements, physical therapy, and kept happy…Of course, I was totally useless, having left for a conference in NYC the night before the storm! (And I barely got back, but that’s another story! Thank you, Executive Platinum status on American Airlines.)

The streets in Somerville still weren’t plowed when we got the next storm…which we were told would be only 1”-3” and instead turned out to be 8”…along with another round of temps hitting -16° F thanks to wind chill overnight…and yes, we are coping but the humans are all exhausted and badly stressed, hoping that the next storm this weekend is as ‘trivial’ as predicted ….And we all are very eager for spring! Although, as you can see from the picture, Griffin (snuggled in his overnight sleeping backpack, before we close him in) seems to be taking it all in stride, thankfully!