Wishful thinking in Malden
Winter is over in one Greater Boston community, even though the calendar doesn’t agree.
Malden has lifted all winter restrictions as this season’s warm temperatures and little snowfall persist, with no signs of prolonged cold spells or major snowstorms in the forecast.
Mayor Gary Christenson had some fun announcing the news via Twitter on Wednesday. He made a meme of himself sitting at a news desk for Channel 4 News
Team — the station that famously appears in Will Ferrell’s “Anchorman” — with the text, “Malden’s weather forecast, a lot of snow in February with a 90% chance I’m wrong.”
Malden implemented winter parking rules on Feb. 1 after some minor snow events in late January led officials to believe cold, snowy weather would become the norm, the mayor’s communications director Ron Cochran told the Herald.
But as the National Weather Service is forecasting daily highs in the 40s and 50s for at least the next week, officials are confident that the brunt of the winter has passed, or lack thereof, making it safe to lift restrictions.
Last month was Boston’s fifth warmest January on record.
“We just don’t see enough in the forecast for us to have our residents be ticketed for winter parking,” Cochran said. “Once you get to March, you can usually count on the fact that even if anything comes, it usually goes away pretty quickly. We are not worried about the long-term effects.”
The restrictions — parking to one side of the street 24 hours per day, 7 days per week regardless of the weather — were slated to stay in place until April 1 before Christenson’s announcement Wednesday.
“The good news is that our efforts thus far have been on education versus enforcement,” the mayor said in his tweet, “and as a result no one has been ticketed leading up to today’s announcement.”
If a blizzard or Nor’Easter comes roaring through the city, officials would enact a snow emergency, meaning there would be strict parking restrictions, Cochran said.
Prior to the winter parking season, Malden revamped its restrictions to align more closely to those in nearby communities, with restrictions going into effect at the first major winter storm that requires the city Department of Public Works to deploy plowing and/or sanding. In the past, they’d be effective Nov. 1 through April 1.
“Whether or not it’s 65 and sunny or a foot of snow on the ground, people were getting violations,” Cochran said of the former system. “We clearly thought that was not a good way of conducting the whole operation.”