Weather Continues to Disrupt Travel and Public Transportation

Although the vernal equinox marking the official start of spring is only days away, yesterday was hardly spring-like.

The worst of the weather seems to be nearly over this morning, but the Metro Hyannis area weather conditions during the past 48 hours have certainly left its mark in terms of crashes and delays. The chaos started when temperatures dipped to the freezing mark turning wet and slushy roadways into ice rinks for cars at about 3:00 p.m.

Almost all at once, reports of vehicles sliding off area roads and/or colliding with each other were coming in at such a high rate that nearly every area police cruiser was tied up at one accident or another. Route 28 was so clogged with traffic that wreckers were having problems getting to the various accident scenes to clear the roadways.

Police officers encountered or witnessed several new accidents as they happened or that they did not know about yet while trying to respond to accidents that had already been reported. Police resources were stretched to the limits with all the reported accidents right up to shift change.

Earlier that day, HyannisNews witnessed a flock of robins arriving for their annual summer visit to the area. The perplexed looking robin in the picture checks out his surroundings on Park Avenue in West Yarmouth. He appears to be wondering if spring was late or he and his friends had misread the calendar and jumped the gun for the trip north for the summer.  

Last night, the Hyannis area was continuing to be pelted with sleet and rain driven by winds exceeding 30 mph while some inland areas west of Boston experienced more snow than had been seen during the whole winter so far.

This morning's temperatures soared into the mid fifties for a time, removing all traces of snow and ice in our area, but the weather conditions were continuing to disrupt area public transportation.

The Steamship Authority cancelled its 9:15 a.m. trip out of Hyannis this morning. But, acting upon the promise of improving weather conditions, the ferry Eagle headed for Nantucket "as a trial run" shortly after 10 a.m. amid 35 mph southerly winds that continued to drive rain against the ferry Eagle as she turned around in Hyannis Harbor.

In the top photo, The Eagle is shown making the turn after backing out of her slip. The brand new high speed ferry Iyanough is seen at the dock in the background.

 

Moments later, the Eagle bound for sea passed Bay View Street Beach in West Yarmouth with high winds and an extremely high tide were splashing water into areas of the Bay View Street parking lot.

According to an unnamed Steamship Authority source, the 10:10 a.m.,  departure of the Eagle was made to be in position for the scheduled noon time departure from Nantucket if it was determined that conditions had improved enough to safely resume normal service.