Heart Attack Snow

Picture this: a chilled tableaux in frozen white. You want to run outside and take photos of the beautiful fallen snow or return to the happy nostalgia of your youth and go sledding, or sliding or skating or cross-country skiing perhaps. Maybe even build a snowman (gender-neutral snow person these days). Or at least, sit by the fireplace and have a heaping mug of real cocoa with a giant dollop of marshmallow on top -- Oh, how I love that! -- as you watch the snow flakes fall, one to a million... dropping, dropping, dropping... so many, they blur into one another and individual shapes you can no longer make out.

And then there's the gruesome specter of HEART ATTACK SNOW!

Oh boy!

Heart Attack Snow is a tumultuous mixture of rain and snow, sleet, ice, hale, ice cubes, snow cones, even a little chow mein ( I tossed that in to make sure you are paying attention)... the kitchen sink... all tossed together for good measure.

It's Bad!

It's Star Trek Warp Core Breach in Five Seconds Bad!

It's stretch out the tendons and back muscles, you'll be feeling it in your aching joints for a week bad!

You know you're in trouble when Big Mister Heart Attack Snow comes moseying along!

Heart attack snow is indeed a struggle to be sure, though it doesn't happen with every snow storm. Many a time, New England snow is a powdery and pleasant reaquaintance with nature. And it does snow a lot in the Middle-Boro and Massachusetts in general. Sometimes snow fall can reach accumulations of over 73 cm (that's for the out-of-state readers), a blanket of white purity, a reborn landscape changed into something magical.

But Heart Attack Snow is a big pain in the butt which tempers all of us New England types from appreciating nature's magical canopy. Generally Heart attack Snow results from a coastal storm and warm air masses where you have alternating layers of snow, wet snow, hale, rain and sleet and then a generous topping of more wet snow.

When this all occurs, the snow becomes very compressed and heavy, heavy, heavy, like shoveling together bricks, rocks, and toss in some heavy duty lead for good measure. Add in some howling winds, near-zero visibility, ice forming on everything from your scarf to stockings and beard, and you have yourself a huge elemental situation with ol' Mister Jack frost.

And's it's definitely best to be in good shape when shoveling heart attack snow, with each shovel-full the weight of a pick up truck of Uranium 245, or it may live up to its name. And you feel the ache and strain of that lifting the next day... and the next day... and the day after that. Have a bad back: don't even think about shoveling your way through the dreaded Heart Attack Snow.

And that's the problem in a nutshell right there!

Middle-aged and elderly men (and women of Senior Citizen status too... aka "The Elderly") who may not be in the best of shape, overweight, long in the tooth... try to shovel their way out of the heart attack snow besieging their property and become the victims of it.

For the lucky ones, a family member or friend or the neighbors may reach 911 soon enough to have the ambulance arrive in time to treat the victim But with a blizzard and Nor-easter raging, help may not be on the way until it's too late!

Unfortunately, there are those shovelers who may live alone or receive no outside assistance or conditions are so bad and the emergency services are overwhelmed at that time, who may just disappear into the storm and its aftermath, buried under a large accumulation of drifting snow. The blizzard covers them over completely as if they had never existed on the earth and it takes a trained archaeologist to find them... well, maybe not that dire, but it does take a while to excavate them from snowy mortuary.

These frozen humans, simply may not be found right away as the ferocity of the storm rages on for days. It's not until the snow is over and thaws a bit when the police or fire department find them later, and their grisly fates are noted in the Boston and Southeastern Massachusetts papers.

These unfortunates -- in a wave of New England predictability -- can just be wheeled right out to the nearest cemetery and buried when their bodies and soil thaw out in the spring. We Swamp Yankees are practical, if nothing else, here in Southeastern Massachusetts...

Now if heart attack snow is so unpredictable and hazardous for one's health, why don't the majority of folks just buy snow blowers or pay someone to plow their property?

Good question!

Well some do of course, as we see more and more snow blowers dotting the frigid, wintry New England landscape, but for elderly on a limited or fixed income and poor people of whatever age group in general, a snowblower or plowing service may be out of the question. Or some are just too darn stubborn to quit while ahead! They've shoveled the same snow for the last thirty years and a big storm with extra heavy precipitation isn't going to stop them from completing their dutiful task... Or some are simply "Howie Carr Cheap" and just don't want to part with the moolah.

And even if you do invest in a snow blower, when dealing with heart attack snow, the results can be spectacularly insufficient and aggravating.

I've seen heart attack snow turn snow blowers into giant ice cube makers! Especially the cheaper models with those rubber blades. The dense snow, instead of being expelled, congeals, packs up and plops out -- if you're lucky -- of the machine with a thud right there on the driveway or sidewalk. Or, it forms a cantankerous clogged mess inside of the machine.

Then you have to shut the snowblower off, so your hands don't become accidentally mangled, reach in and  pull out the newly created, over-sized snow cone... only you wouldn't want to eat it.

That my friends is the ultimate revenge of heart attack snow! Even when you think you have finally beaten it after all these years of suffering, it returns with a vengeance at the last moment to haunt you once again...

Image Credit: http://theconversation.com/why-does-shoveling-snow-increase-risk-of-heart-attack-36899