In *MY* day …
This week marks 30 years since the ‘Blizzard of 78’, one of the greatest weather events to ever hit the northeastern US. This week every news organization in the area is falling over themselves putting out retrospectives and slide shows and so on. So I figured … why not?
The description of the event includes all of this:
More than 4 feet of snow.
100 MPH winds.
High tides cresting 40 foor waves.
Dozens of homes and businesses wiped out instantly, hundreds badly damaged.
100 people dead due to every imaginable weather related cause.
I was only 12 at the time, old enough to shovel snow for several people in the neighborhood to help out. Old enough to be terrified watching the news showing the parking lot route 128 had become and waiting for my dad to make it home.
But young enough to enjoy the fact that we had a week off from school and that the roads were shut down. Young enough not to worry about being without power or phones for a while. Young enough that the ’64 Impala that someone had run a red light and smashed into my Dad and brother two months earlier, which no longer had a driver window, which was totally covered to the roof with snow – I was young enough that it became our snow fort for the winter.
Here are some pictures I had gotten from my parents before they moved south a year or so ago, that I am now preparing to move soon. This one shows our house from the street. It is already more than 24 hours later, the snow has compacted, and everything is completely closed and snowed in. In order there is my Dad, my older brother (would have been ~14.5) and me (almost 12). The covered car was a ’74 Chevy Impala …
In this one you can see a bit up the street, showing that even by the 8th, two days after the storm, roads weren’t plowed. The ‘highway’ down the street opened that day, and the convenience store (Bob’s) opened up as well. We would take a sled down the street to get stuff, and run errands for people who couldn’t get out of their houses yet.
OK, this isn’t the Blizzard, but me after Christmas just before … note the M16-look alike (had forgotten that) and my fave gift from that year – VertiBird! It was a helicopter that flew in circles … I remember that the first one I got didn’t work, and my dad called all around (hot gift that year) and that Child World in Framingham said they had one and would hold it for him. We got there, and of course they didn’t have any … my Dad was *furious*! Upon yelling at the manager, they ‘found’ one held for someone else and I got it! Unfortunately, while I kept it, my attempts to rewire and get it working for my kids were to no avail … it was just dead.
Some great memories from that year have stuck with me forever.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Great pictures. I wish I could find some from that winter. It was bad for the midwest, too. I was 9 years old and we had just moved to the part of Michigan that is known for getting the most snow. That winter set two records for the area. We got over 390 inches of snow for the winter and 154 inches in one month (Dec.). I remember missing a great deal of school and having to shovel off the roof at least 3 times during the winter. It was unusual to have to do it once, but the roof would collapse if it got too deep.
The governor declared a state of emergency and 20 people died as a result of being stuck in their cars. Our county had dozens of plows and other equipment to move snow, but there were times when the roads were impassable and people with snowmobiles were the only ones that could get out. If there was a medical emergency, the road commission would plow a path for the ambulance to get where it needed to go.
As a kid, it never dawned on me how bad it was. Thankfully, we never lost power and my mom always over-shopped when it came to food. I had a great time building tunnels through the snow banks and watching cable TV (we had 13 channels).