This will be the day all of this may happen.
The leap year babies put a curse on us.LOL
This is their present to us.
Since November, 102.2 inches of snow have fallen on Concord. It could be worse, but not much. Twenty more inches and we'll beat the all-time record of 122 inches, set in the winter of 1873-1874. At least we have snowblowers.

"I like snow and all, but this . . ." said Nathan Pickett of Barnstead yesterday. "I'm just not used to 10-foot high snowbanks."

Nicole McAlister of Loudon is no less fed up with shoveling her driveway and traversing icy walks. There is just one thing she likes about so much snow. "When my 8 a.m. classes (at NHTI in Concord) are cancelled," she said.

Yes, spring is just three weeks away, but that's little comfort given that forecasters say another storm will arrive tonight and dump 6 inches of snow before it ends tomorrow. And the long-term forecast calls for snow again in the middle of the month.

In fact, James Mansfield, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, said Concord gets nearly 15 inches of snow in March and April alone in an average year. Since this year is far from average, Mansfield predicts we'll break the all-time record.

He sounded excited just thinking about it. "Records are meant to be broken," he said.

It's not enough, apparently, that Concord has already "smashed" one snowfall record, as Mansfield put it. The weather service also tracks snowfall in "meteorological" terms, which means the snow that falls in December, January and February.

Concord had 100.1 inches in that time this season. Before that, the record was 78 inches in the winter of 1886-1887.

Record snowfalls are good news for some. Peter Bitt of Lincoln works at a New Hampshire ski resort and said, most years, the place has 120 inches of snow cover by now. This year, it's at 180 inches, he said.

"I'm not sick of (snow) yet," he said. "We live in New Hampshire. If you don't like so much snow, move south."

And don't forget the snowmobilers. Chris Gamache of the state Department of Resources and Economic Development said the North Country can usually count on 14 weeks of good riding in a typical year. This year, riding is still good throughout the state.

The last time New Hampshire offered such a good winter for snowmobiling was 2002-2003, Gamache said, when 65,000 people registered the snow machines in

the state. That season, snowmobile riders contributed $1.2 billion to the state's economy, he said. It's looking like it could be a repeat this year.

And it's good for the snow plow operators, right? Maybe not.

"I mean, we are making money off it, but enough is enough," said Bob McKechnie, operations manager for Jungle Jims in Epsom. In the winter, McKechnie oversees the snow plowing and removal operation; in the spring it's landscaping.