Snow reaches the Cape late and lands wet, and by four in the morning the Mashpee rotary is awake before anything else on the peninsula. Maffei Landscape Contractors runs ahead of the storm — plowing driveways and lots, stacking the piles where they will not swallow a parking space or block a sight line, shoveling entries and walks, laying salt and sand on the slick spots. The storms that begin as rain and turn over to ice are the ones worth watching, so properties get checked back through the night. There is a plain pleasure in a lot that is dark pavement at sunrise while the pitch pines around it are still white. Mashpee sets the pace, and the surrounding Cape towns follow.