Snowpocalypse

[cos]

My first 7 winters, spent in Uganda and Israel, I saw no snow. We moved to Boston (well, Brookline) the summer before my 8th winter - a winter that was determined to make up the difference, and show me 8 years of snow in one.

By February, we'd already had a few major snowstorms and some smaller snowfalls. One morning before going to school, we heard on the radio that the previously predicted 1-2 inches for that day had been increased to 2-4 inches. I remember watching the snow fall heavily through the large school cafeteria or gym windows that morning.

By late in the morning, it became clear that 2-4 inches was an underestimate, that in fact we might already have gotten 2-4 inches in the first couple of hours, and they closed school and sent everyone home. At the same time schools and offices were closing all over the region, and a lot of parents had trouble getting to school to pick up their kids, but my brother and I lived in the apartment building directly adjacent to the school playground, across from the school, so we just walked home without waiting for parents. Wind tried to prevent it, and I remember being blown off my feet a few times, but apparently I did succeed in crossing the playground. School didn't reopen for two weeks.*

What we were getting was a cross between a hurricane and a blizzard. It wasn't just the unusually rapid snowfall, lasting two whole days, it was also the 80-110mph winds that piled up gigantic snowdrifts** and caused all sorts of havoc. On the south shore and down on the cape, houses fell into the ocean. On Route 128 (aka I-95, though I think it wasn't I-95 yet then), thousands of cars were trapped and some people even died in their cars, buried in snow and exhaust fumes.

I didn't experience most of this directly - though my parents were in a car on Route 128, they got out. . Here's one thing I did experience:

The week after the storm, on a bright sunny day, some friends and I were in my building's parking lot, which had temporarily become a snowy playground for us. We were making snowmen and other snowconstructions, and digging in the snow... we struck gold! Well, we found something shiny and metallic and gold colored, and it was exciting. So we kept digging to try to discover what it was. We made the hole, already probably about a foot deep, deeper and wider, until we found our metallic gold surface sloping downwards at an angle... dark... clear... a windshield. We'd found not gold, but the roof of a gold-colored car.

When people talk about snowpocalypses and snowmageddons, this is what I think of.

* Our school year ended up having fewer than the required number of school days that year, because they didn't yet have a policy of extending it into the summer if there were too many snow days. That policy was enacted the following year, in response to the blizzard.

** I remember hearing about 12 foot snow drifts. In my neighborhood snow was piled up significantly higher than I was tall, but how deep that was, I wouldn't know. Could've been merely 8 feet, not 12.

Comments

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

I remember this... Same geographical area too. Within about 2-4 miles depending on where you lived at the time.

[cos]

Across the playground from Pierce School in Brookline.

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

*nod*

So that's only about a mile at most from my particular memories of same. Mine were mostly from Knivet park right across the street from the Dexter Park building.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Of course, the thing that made it even worse was that there had been a huge storm the week before, so there was really no place to put the snow and no drainage to provide any kind of diversion path for the storm surge.

I tried to explain to someone that there had been a travel curfew on during part of the recovery and they really couldn't quite grasp the concept.

[oscuridad.livejournal.com]

I was living in Acton, MA at the time of the blizzard. I was three years old. My dad put our white cat out into the snow, to see how white he really was. The cat was a bit yellower than the snow, and promptly fled inside when he saw the wall of snow at our door :P

[ceelove.livejournal.com]

I was five years old, living in Norwell (south shore) in '78, and I remember opening the back door to discover snow higher than my head.

[epilady.livejournal.com]

I was in third grade in Gilmanton, NH. I enjoyed sledding off the hill our car had made in the driveway.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

I remember being trapped at my Grandparent's house for a week during the Blizzard of '93 (apparently they now call it The Storm of the Century; it wasn't that we got an absolute amount that was so much, but Maryland didn't even have enough equipment to pick it up, much less to cart it away). That was actually quasi-intentional, since their place was far better equipped to deal with extended power-outs and other potential problems of such a storm - non-electric heat and stove/oven, a huge yard for sending us kids out into when cabin fever gets too high, etc. Still, being stuck in the same place for a week was a completely novel experience that has not been repeated. That's a blizzard in my mind: a snowstorm so bad you can't go anywhere far a time measured in weeks rather than days.

Honestly, I'm glad these storms are being called Snowpocalypses or Snowmaggedons rather than blizzards. There needs to be a different name for something that won't immobilize you for weeks but might do so for a day or two, particularly in places where any snow at all is strange and unusual. Best of all, there's a certain modern sort of joke to the new terms that "blizzard" properly lacks. . .

[cos]

> a snowstorm so bad you can't go anywhere far a time measured in weeks rather than days.

At Marlboro College in VT, where estheruth went, the one unpaved forest road that goes several miles from campus to town to the main road (VT route 9) doesn't always get plowed so promptly. At the very least, if there's a big snowfall on Friday, nobody's driving to town 'til Monday. But a week cut-off isn't that rare, IIRC.

[desiringsubject.livejournal.com]

I don't remember it (I was 2), but the pictures of me in it are pretty awesome. Every picture has snow SIGNIFICANTLY taller than me!

[fyfer.livejournal.com]

This happened the winter before I was born, and I grew up hearing stories of it, so I was always sad to have missed it.

[coraline]

yeah -- i was 4 months old so there are pictures of my mom standing next to the snowdrifts holding me, but i don't remember it. sad.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

holy wow. digging down to the top of a car.

[cos]

The impressive thing to me is that even though we should've known there were cars there - it was a parking lot, after all - we just didn't think of it because it wasn't visually obvious at all. So we were *surprised* to find a car. And this was on a sunny day on what I'm pretty sure was the following week.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Was there a thick crust on the snow or something? I'm thinking Heidi...

[ron_newman]

I was an MIT student, living across the river on Bay State Road near BU, and remember this storm vividly. It closed MIT for an entire week.

[ceo]

I don't think they closed my school early that day, and I walked the half-mile home in the blizzard. Fun. What I remember from the aftermath is the local grocery store rationing milk (my parents cheated by each buying a gallon separately) and hauling the groceries home on sleds. Oh, and I also remember Mike Dukakis on TV in his yellow sweater; that's when I learned who the governor of Massachusetts was.

There's a picture of me on our front walk, with the snowbank towering over my head.

making up for weather-survivor's guilt by being smug....

[blue-estro.livejournal.com]

I was only two, so I don't remember the winter of 1978 at all, but the internet suggests that the weather was much like it is right now.

[antimony.livejournal.com]

I wasn't born yet -- not for another year (and no, I was not a blizzard of 78 baby), but my parents still talk of it enough that it's my Standard of Snowpocalypses. If they haven't banned cross-country skis to keep people who don't need to be out from going out, and if insurance agencies aren't refusing to process stolen-car claims because people have LOST where they put their car in the snow, it ain't that snowy.