Snow in Santa Fe and Boston

First, Boston gets a lot more snow! But this winter Santa Fe has had 36 inches and Boston has had none...So this is sort of a virtual difference.....I was actually looking forward to Santa Fe snow which always seemed so clean. But now we are beset with the same detritus of ice and sand (red cinders in this case) and gravel and paper wrappers and empty soda cans all molded into a rock hard road border.

Second, number of snowplows. Santa Fe has 6 snowplows. Six!!! I'm not sure how many Boston has, but I know that the state of Massachusetts has access to 5,000 pieces of equipment (since lots of the plowing is done by private contractors). Many streets here are not plowed--the city announced a standard of everyone being within 3 blocks of a plowed street. There are no parking restrictions (like East Coast snow emergencies) or sidewalk shoveling requirements of home and business owners. (On the other hand, we have a very low tax rate....)

Third, number of snow shovels. Many people don't own them in Santa Fe. My next door neighbors came over and borrowed mine after they arrived home several days after the snow ended to find out they couldn't get into their driveway. I brought one with me from Boston and was very happy to have it!

Fourth, no one in Santa Fe tries to reserve their shoveled parking space with broken lawn chairs and old barbecue grills. Here is a shoveled out space right down the street from me that is trustingly left open.