Eleven-year-old Zalina Beland had a snow day on Friday, so she was out bright and early helping her grandmother shovel the 10 inches of snow that blanketed Bristol in Thursday’s storm.
"It’s very cold," Zalina Beland said.
"I hate it," Zalina’s grandmother, Tammy Beland, said. "I hate it. It’s too much."
Mother of two Siobhan Tanner said she wasn’t prepared at all for a storm this big this early in the season.
"It’s earlier than we’re used to, so it has been fun. My kids are so excited to see the snow, but it’s not as fun shoveling it."
Some people said they even shoveled on Thursday night to get ahead, but they said Friday morning’s rain weighed the snow down, making clean-up challenging.
"We shoveled like three times last night, so I’m exhausted," Tammy said.
Local
Bristol officials said even they had to quickly transition into winter mode.
"We had recycling routes today," Bristol Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu explained. "We have trash pick-up today. We have bulk pick-ups, so when you have that type of activity on your curb lines already, making snow pick-up is always going to be complicated."
In West Hartford, which also picked up several inches of snow, the director of public works said the storm hit at a tricky time when people were still in fall clean-up mode and not quite prepared for the first snow. He said he is concerned there could be some standing water in areas that typically drain well.
"We’re probably going to have extensive melting and a lot of our catch basins will probably have snow on top of that, which is probably on top of some leaf base," West Hartford’s Director of Public Works John Phillips explained.
