QUINCY – The sea had reached Robert Blodgett’s Houghs Neck house for the first time he could remember.
The Quincy resident was finishing up shoveling his Rock Island Road home around noon when he stopped to point out what the previous day’s nor’easter had caused. The water had swept up past a house right on the water, he said, and it crossed the road to Blodgett’s home, trickling under one of his cars.
“The tide came all the way up my driveway,” he said.
He’d shoveled out his main car and a parking spot for his daughter. Despite the frigid winds, the work wasn’t too bad, as he hadn’t been plowed in, he said.
“The plow man was good to us,” he said.
The city administration said workers will keep at snow-removal effort during overnight hours over the weekend. The work will focus on the area around schools, MBTA stations and the city’s business districts.
Overnight snow-emergency parking rules remain in effect, so people can’t park during the night on emergency routes, and parking’s allowed only on the odd-numbered side of other streets.
The peninsula neighborhood of Squantum temporarily was cut off from the mainland by flooding at high tide during the storm, but many of the neighborhood’s main streets were plowed and sanded by Friday afternoon.
“The streets are in as best a shape as possible,” said Ward 6 city councilor William Harris, who lives in Squantum.
He said a few people had to be rescued where streets flooded, and some people were left without gas. But crews restored those services before night fell, he said.
“It was just another matter of Mother Nature raising havoc with us in the northeast here,” he said.
In a way, Friday was a beautiful day, with a bright sun shining on still-pure white snow. With that in mind, Lisa Amado of Whitman had taken her kids to her hometown of Quincy Friday afternoon to check out Wollaston Beach. As bitter winds whipped off of the gelid bay water, she pointed to the sand of the beach, which wind, water and snow had turned into a tundra-like landscape.
“It looks like Alaska,” she said.
– Sean Cotter covers Quincy for the Ledger. He may be reached by email at scotter@ledger.com or by phone at 617-786-7049. Like the Ledger page on Facebook to follow more South Shore news.