Not much to report - we have a bright, sunny, cold day but no records broken as far as I know now. Here at Joe's Pond, the coldest we had was -22 degrees - again, as far as we know. That was what Fred reported at 6 a.m. It could have gone lower, but at Rossi's that was what they had, too. It isn't going to warm up much today, but later in the week it will moderate and give us a break with a little snow and then another cold weekend. Maybe in February the pattern will change.

I was thinking last night about how the roads were kept in the winter here years ago. In the earliest years, people just hunkered down to wait out big snow storms or bitterly cold weather, so the need for roads was minimal. Not many people had horses, let alone sleighs to ride in - they more often used cows or oxen for heavy work. In the early to mid 1800's, there were more horses and sleds or sleighs, and then there was a need for some sort of roads. Snow rollers were used on some of Cabot's back roads until sometime in the 1930's. There were roads that drifted so badly the old crawler snowplow would need to spend hours to break open even a short stretch, so the roller with a four-horse hitch would be used. I've often thought how hard it must have been for those horses to wade through the snow pulling that big, heavy roller. And how cold those guys must have been up on top of the roller. The packed surface must have been nice for sleighs, though. The above picture is from the Cabot Historical Society collection.