Boston MA
I'll never forget the Blizzard of '78.
Posted on 01/25/2024 6:33:47 AM PST by Phoenix8
I was barely seven years old at the time. I remember the huge snow drifts right up to the edge of the neighbors roof. We had a fuel oil furnace and nearly ran out of fuel for it over the next few days. My dad still talks about that.
My oldest daughters first birthday was Jan 26 of 77. We were in NE Ohio (Youngstown) and the snow started coming.
Everybody showed up through all that crap (We’re a hearty people), stayed for the party and drove back home through the blizzard.
The morning of the 27th, you could literally not see a car in the parking lot (they were buried in snow).
Yes, I remember it well. It’s why I retired in Florida.
I drove from west suburban Chicago out of the blizzard to a meeting in Jackson, Michigan and back again into the ongoing blizzard. I made it within 500 yards of my apartment before burying the car in a snowdrift. Those were the days...
Had snow drifts as tall as the house....seems more and more like it was a weather experiment gone bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Modification_Convention
https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/weather/ADA283033.pdf
https://www.weather.gov/iln/19780126
Introduced in House (02/24/1977) Weather Modification Regulation Act - Title I: Weather Modification Licenses and Permits, Reporting Requirements, and Penalties.
The Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD), formally the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques is introduced on 18 May 1977 in Geneva and entered into force on 5 October 1978.
On 15 November 1978, there’s a United States Senate Report: “Weather modification: programs, problems, policy, and potential”.
https://archive.org/stream/WeatherModification_201511/weatificat00unit_djvu.txt
I remember it well, while living in Hillsborough NJ, working in Midtown Manhattan.
We were right in the middle of this one. My M-I-L was living with us at the time and hubby and I left the 3 kids with her and walked 5 blocks to the closest grocery, a small produce store with a meat counter and some groceries. It was difficult to walk but we brought all we could carry.
We didn’t loose electricity and the roads were being plowed as the snow fell. I worked at KMART and we were in the middle of inventory. After the snow let up and the roads were passable Kmart sent people out to pick up employees who had no way to get there so inventory could be finished.
Our dealing with the blizzard didn’t end til the fall. 9 months later we added a bouncing baby boy to our family! Our Blizzard baby. And there were many whose families grew as well.
It was a magical time to be a kid …
On this day in 1978, the storm of the century paralyzed the entire state of Massachusetts. The Blizzard of '78 dropped between two and four feet of snow on the Bay State over the course of 32 hours. Ferocious winds created drifts as high as 15 feet. Along the coast, flood tides forced 10,000 people into emergency shelters. Inland, over 3,000 cars and 500 trucks were immobilized along an eight-mile stretch of Route 128. By the time it subsided, the storm had taken the lives of 29 Massachusetts citizens, destroyed 11,000 homes, and caused more than one billion dollars in damage. The Blizzard of '78 is also remembered for many acts of kindness, cooperation, and courage.
- https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/blizzard-paralyzes-massachusetts.html
I was in CT in middle school. My dad had a CJ5 and for days was delivering food to shut ins and delivering medical staff to hospitals. His favorite story is driving a nurse to Hartford and she said the roads don’t look to bad. He slammed the breaks had he slid about a hundred feet with a 360 thrown in on black ice. They talked about other things on way to the hospital.
My dad’s cousins drove the town and county plow trucks on the main roads and rest of the fam were plowing out business in their private company trucks for close to 4 days straight to keep the drifts from building up.
Me, I played in the 20-30 foot snow drifts by the house building snow forts and having snowball fights. Sledding was awesome as we could bring out our flexible flyer sleds because of the packed snow and ice over our hill.
Bust snow ever.
Military equipment was flown into Boston to clear snow from the southbound lane of Route 128 between Highland Avenue and Great Plain Avenue in Needham following the Blizzard of 1978. John Blanding / The Boston Globe. - https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2018/02/06/woman-remembers-driving-on-route-128-during-blizzard-1978/https://bdc2020.o0bc.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/180119_BS_002-2-768x432.jpg?width=800
But, but this winter is the worst in history!
https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com › 15-facts-1978-blizzard
Remembering the 1978 Blizzard - New England Historical Society
Snowdrifts trapped 3,000 cars and 500 trucks along eight miles of Rte. 128 alone. Fourteen people died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in their snowbound vehicles. In New England’s cities, the 1978 blizzard stranded thousands more cars that took days to dig out.
Just imagine what the toll would have been if they had been electric cars...
That one really was a once in a century storm, although there was a ginormous one in the 1930s, before there was much in the way of motorized snow removal, so, technically, a twice in a century storm. That earlier one was before my time. The 1978 storm really was the biggest in my lifetime.
I was living in DC during that blizzard. A friend of mine had taken his wife to the hospital when she went into labor, and had to go home to get some things. Well, the blizzard hit after he got home. He was stuck.
He went out onto South Dakota Avenue looking for someone with a 4-wheel drive to help him. He held up a sign that said “Need to get to the hospital. Wife in labor”.
Someone picked him up, but not before a Washington Post photographer snapped a picture of him with his sign. Made it on to the next day’s edition.
I missed it, as I was on a 3 year vacation in Germany’s Fulda Gap, courtesy of the American taxpayers.
Don Kent, local meteorologist, predicted, “chance of flurries”.
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