Snow expected to end an already miserable February

February 29, 2008 04:01 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

(Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff)

Much of February look like this: driving rain and heavy slush. On Feb. 13, Harold Miles shoveled on Cambridge Road in Woburn.

By Mike Bello and Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff

This long, miserable month has already set a February record for the most rain, sleet, and snow ever to fall in Boston. And it is not done yet.

Snow is expected to start today near Interstate 495 at 7 p.m., with flakes hitting the Boston area by 8 p.m. When the storm blows out to sea by 10 a.m. Saturday, Boston may have 1 to 3 inches of snow, with a higher total north and west. The South Shore should get 1 to 3 inches snow, while Nashua, N.H. may be buried by 10 inches.

"People are sick of the storms," said Bill Simpson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton.

By yesterday, 7.91 inches of snow, rain, and sleet had fallen at Logan International Airport, washing away the previous February record of 7.81 inches of precipitation set in 1984, according to Neal Strauss, another meteorologist in Taunton.

Single day precipitation records were set on Feb. 1 and 13. On six different days, more than 1/2 inch of moisture fell from the sky. It rained, snowed, or sleeted 14 of the first 28 days of the month.

And it is not just the cold rain and snow. Daylight has been shrouded in clouds roughly 60 percent of the month, according to the sunshine recorder at Blue Hill Observatory.

If April showers bring May flowers, what good is a gloomy, wet February?

Plenty.

"It's like money in the bank," said Ruth Hazzard, a vegetable specialist with the University of Massachusetts Extension, of the abundance of water. "You know we are going to need it in the summer."

The rain and melting snow have filled reservoirs, replenished cranberry bogs, and saturated a state that had been struggling in a drought advisory since October.

“I know people are tired of it -- I’m tired of it,” said Linda Hutchins, a hydrologist with the state Department of Recreation and Conservation. “But scientifically, it does a lot of good.”