NEW YORK — Forget the winter of our discontent. For Northeasterners enduring one of the coldest, snowiest seasons in decades, it’s the winter of our exasperation, full-on funk and enough-is-enough rage.
From slush-covered Manhattan intersections to snow-choked Boston streets, moods are low and tempers short.
Linda Edwards’ breaking point came 10 days ago, when pipes froze and cut off water to her home in Niagara Falls, N.Y. She has been shuttling to relatives’ homes to fill gallon jugs ever since.
“The snow is bad enough, the snow and the frigid temperatures. That’s enough to deal with, but this is so absolutely frustrating, it’s unbelievable,” Edwards said Thursday.
By Thursday afternoon, more than 20 inches of snow had fallen on parts of Kentucky, and conditions worsened in the Northeast as snow started to pile up.
The massive snow in Kentucky left hundreds of people stranded on two major highways and National Guard members delivering them food or driving them to warming centers.
Boston is having one of its snowiest winters on record, with 105.5 inches so far, just two inches shy of the record that dates to 1872.
Winter has been kinder to New York City, even if it doesn’t seem so to those slogging and slipping around town. Last month was the city’s third-coldest February on record, and the coldest since 1934.
In Buffalo, N.Y., Robert Brombos Sr. snapped when The Buffalo News recently wrote a feature about “snowbirds” waiting out winter in Florida.
“Pouring salt in a wound,” Brombos fumed in a letter to the editor. The winter, he said by phone, has “been depressing the longer it goes on.”
