Bullies on our tails: What is it that drives so many proprietors of those towering, many-wheeled SUVs and trucks to crowd close behind owners of sedans they are following on the roads in nasty weather? Ego? Contempt? Pity? It is almost impossible to drive carefully on snowy and icy highways and side roads when the driver of one of these behemoths with their high front lights tailgates you fender-to-fender; to slow down risks a crash; to speed up risks a slide off the road. Many are polite and give you room, but far too many are reckless bullies behind the wheel.

Those nasty bumps in the road: Potholes and frost heaves are, for the most part seasonal, if frustrating and often costly; it’s the sunken areas around manholes/sewer covers in the streets that make driving in Massachusetts year-round the equivalent of riding in a buckboard. These plentiful castings, as public works teams call them, are not placed in any obvious geometric pattern as drivers encounter them; some sit in the middle of the travel lane, so you can drive over them; others a few yards ahead can be on the left or the right of the lane. Case in point: A hundred-yard stretch along Adams Street in Dorchester just past Richmond Street heading to Gallivan Boulevard offers three badly sunken casting sites that require a careful driver to zig-zag to avoid a crackling thump of struts. Drivers who travel regular routes to work or play come to know where the beastly ones lie and aim to avoid them as a football player tries to fend off tackles on a run down the field. But even these drivers are thumped when the snow is falling or darkness sets in and covers up the trouble spots.

A few years ago, the Globe reported that the city of Boston was taking a new approach to identifying and repairing the numerous sunken manholes sites citywide while noting that a complete repair job would involves teams of workers and a number of hours per spot. Yes, we live in a four-season clime, but can’t they be filled in correctly the first time?

You gotta be kidding! It’s all well and good when mayor and governors and newscasters suggest as a matter of form that listeners try to get the snow off their roofs in anticipation of yet another storm, but it’s also mostly for laughs. Yes, a snow rake works for the side and roof of the one-story garage, but those icicles hanging from the roof and the eight feet of snow atop the screened-in back porch? The storms that keep on coming have overwhelmed companies that promote their ability to clear snow and resolve ice dams. It’s a matter of luck getting one of them on the line just to get on a schedule for work on your house.

Missing in action? Am I mistaken that the time when hordes of teens carrying their own shovels and approaching homeowners in their neighborhoods with offers of shoveling their walks has passed us by? Maybe it’s the magnitude of the three-week snowfall, but they don’t seem in great evidence on the days when you can get around the city.

Inside dope from NOAA: You don’t have to understand the in-house lingo to know that meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are deep on the case 24/7 tracking all manner of lows and highs and troughs across the continent. The NOAA weather website (noaa.gov) where you can access the forecast for an individual community is a must for serious weather-watchers who can listen in (via text) to the casual banter of the meteorologists at work.

Following is an excerpt from this morning’s forecast discussion on the site looking to the end of this week: “The weekend: Nothing concrete. Continued certainty of the broad cyclonic pattern across the NE-CONUS [Continental United States] through which we will likely continue to see a series of weather disturbances followed by shots of Arctic air. No end appears in sight as to the brutal winter we have experienced. The snowy/below normal temperature pattern seemingly continues all the way through the month of February per CPC [Climate Prediction Center] analogs. This month will definitely be one for the record books in terms of … as we already know … snowfall and monthly average temperature.