But bookended on each side of that storm were two of the biggest snowstorms to ever hit New England. On January 20th, Boston recorded 20 inches of powdery snow. It was even called the "storm of the decade"
But not for very long. During Feb 6-7, the Blizzard of '78 (as New Englanders know it) dumped up to four feet of snow and devastated many coastal areas with massive flooding due to the wind-whipped waves that came ashore.
That was quite a winter. I was in high school that year and our teachers all told us that we'd end up going to school through July to make up for all the snow days we had.
But that turned out to be just a schoolyard scare (like the metric system they kept threatening to impose on us). They ended up extending the school day by about an hour and a half to make up for the lost time so we could start our summer vacation on time. But that wasn't done so much for the students, it was the teacher's union that pushed for that measure. Most of that hour and a half was done in the study hall.
I was north of MA at the time. We weren’t so wimpy as to take that long getting dug out.
Drove up to Brockton from MD to visit my girlfriend after this.
They were dumping snow at the fairgrounds. Even then each intersection had snow at least 8ft high so you had to creep around to make sure the way was clear.
I was living in Sturbridge, MA at the time. They sent us home early from work the afternoon of Feb. 6. Drove home in a total whiteout. My then 10 and 8-year old daughters loved every minute of it, no school for a week.