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Hudson wins Mass. snowfall jackpot

Town adapts well as residents dig out

HUDSON — The Blizzard of 2015 brought this small community a state championship: 36 inches of snow, which tied for tops in Massachusetts and prompted a tad of self-congratulation at Town Hall.

“There’s a certain amount of local pride in being first in anything,” said Thomas Moses, the town’s executive assistant.

Moses trekked to work Tuesday on cross-country skis. But on Wednesday, wearing laid-back jeans in his third-floor office, he needed only to look outside to see Hudson humming back to life.

Eleazar Servin pushed heaps of snow off the roof of Victor’s 50’s Diner. Chatty patrons nearly filled the Rail Trail Flatbread Co. And bearded Johnny Barrett, an electrician, waited on Main Street for a ride to work.

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Hudson, which tied Lunenburg and Auburn as this storm’s snow king, was unbowed and only slightly awed. No power outages, no serious emergencies, and perhaps most impressive of all — no complaints, officials said.

“It feels good because we’ve dealt with it well,” Moses said.

That good feeling persisted during the blizzard even when a popular coffee shop — “which we consider essential in an emergency” — closed for the duration, Moses said.

Streets were being plowed Wednesday, snow was being moved, traffic was flowing, and pedestrians were out and about in the hometown of Paul Cellucci, the late former governor.

Even Servin, moving gingerly about the slippery roof of the diner, reveled in his work.

“I was inside all day during the storm and watched it from my window,” Servin said. “But this is great. I like it. It’s beautiful. But I think I might be tired when it’s done.”

Amid all the smiles, however, sleepy Hudson had become something of a walled town.

Sidewalks had morphed into narrow corridors, some with shoulder-high siding. Snowbanks towered 20 feet in shopping centers. And driving, for the daring, became a nervy game akin to Whac-a-Mole, in which cars darted suddenly from behind the hidden sides of growing, white pyramids.

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The weather did not stop John Crossman, 79, from wearing shorts as he shoveled in Hudson.Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff

Up a hill from Main Street, Ann Perkins, 68, fumed as she shoveled her driveway again, unhappy because the town’s sidewalk-clearing machine had just buried her car after painstaking work to clear it.

“I don’t care about the snow because it’s Mother Nature,” she said. “But I don’t think they have to do this with the plow.”

The snow bank, at 8 feet, towered over her 5-foot frame.

Still, the mood in Hudson was calm, almost festive.

“This is cool,” said Madeline Fuller, a 23-year-old hostess at the Rail Trail. “It makes the town look pretty.”

Moses echoed the winter wonderland theme.

“I love snow. I grew up in upstate New York, in the Adirondacks,” Moses said. “But this is a lot of snow no matter where you live.”

About a mile away, Lisa Cloutier wielded a 10-foot brush to clean a fleet of parked schoolbuses, all covered with a thick overcoat of snow and awaiting a signal to return to action. Hudson schools were closed Wednesday.

Like many people in town, Cloutier greeted her work — and the end of the storm — with a smile.

“You don’t need the gym today,” Cloutier said, stretching and reaching and raking more snow off a big, yellow bus. “I’m like a little kid.”

Wyatt Cutler, 8, found the sledding fine on Tuesday in Hudson, on a pile left behind by a snowplow driver.Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff

The romantic shimmer of new-fallen snow, however, was of little concern to Jeff Steere and other dump-truck drivers who hauled the stuff in a gear-grinding procession to a large yard near public works headquarters.

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Steere had been shuttling back and forth from the yard, following the tracks of a snow-blower that filled his truck, over and over, until he lost count of how many trips he had made.

Some drivers worked 24 straight hours, said general foreman Mike Tarves, followed by a few hours of sleep, and then another marathon stint as tons of snow were dumped on the frozen ground and pushed around by a bulldozer.

When asked how much snow had been hauled there, Tarves paused and pondered the unknowable.

“You’re welcome to measure it,” he said to a visitor.

But when asked how his crews kept themselves going, Tarves had a ready answer.

“It’s just something we do,” he said with a shrug and a smile. “A lot of people don’t realize what we do. A lot of them feel we don’t do anything.”

But during a blizzard that carpeted Hudson with as much snow as anywhere in the state, they now have a reminder.


Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at macquarrie@globe.com.