Southern New Englanders re-adjust to winter

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) — After a vacation, winter is back.

“It’s been a pretty warm January,” said Eleanor Robinson of Providence. “This is the first day it’s been super cold in a while.”

Robinson stocked up on the essentials at Shaw’s in North Providence.

“It was really crowded, and kind of overwhelming, actually,” she said. “But I got what I needed for the weekend.”

Robinson is serious about being ready for the snow.

“I have rock salt and I have an all–wheel vehicle,” she said. “But I hope everybody with two–wheel drive stays safe.”

At Whole Foods in Providence, Denise Bebbington was a bit concerned about road conditions on her way back home to Worcester.

“We’re going to go sooner rather than later, because I don’t like driving in the snow,” she said.

But some say they haven’t had much trouble, even in older cars.

“I have a ’60s car, and it’s fine,” said Carissa Spatcher of Central Falls. “It was not slippery.”

Not everyone seems upset about the return of winter.

“I think the cold gets a bad rap,” said Thomas Ryan of Providence. “I think there are these moral judgments we put on the cold and the warmth that are far too universally assumed.”

It’s the temperature roller-coaster that has some more concerned.

“The back–and–forth stuff is weird,” Spatcher said.

Some say the sudden burst of winter isn’t strange at all.

“If you asked this question the other day when it was sunny, that’s when the answer would be, ‘This feels strange,'” said John Fell of Central Falls. “But today, this feels normal.'”

©WLNE-TV/ABC6 2020