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" There were thousands of cars stranded in the highways and it took the National Guard to get them out. All those poor people had to go to work that morning and their bosses kept them working until it was too late to get home safely. "

However, the forecasts (cept for Harvey Lennard) did not come close to predicting this.

currentSlide of 62 The morning of the storm, the roads in Boston were clear with just 6 inches predicted in the official forecast.

However, meteorologist Harvey Leonard had predicted a "textbook" storm with blizzard conditions several days before.

Route 128 was among the first major roads to feel the impact of the storm. By morning, the impact of the storm on Route 128 was clear.

Gov. Dukakis mobilized 4,000 National Guardsmen and 300 federal troops.

Some streets remained unplowed for a week.

I was living just off of Revere Street in Revere during the 1978 storm. Our side street never did get properly plowed. Two days after the storm, all the residents came out and we had a snow-shoveling party. Portable radios were cranked up to WRKO (still a Top 40 station back then) and all the males on the street 14 and older just got to it. We were able to clear enough of a path to make it passable for a car. If cars were coming from the other direction, one of them had to back up as there was not enough room to go around.

The women and girls were keeping us fed and plenty liquored up. Homemade lasagna, sandwiches, even boiled lobsters that were fetched from nearby Revere Beach (thousands of them washed ashore and we put them in Hefty bags and toted them home). The radio was warning people not to eat lobsters that washed up on the beaches but I don't know of anybody that got sick from it.

A lot of vivid memories from that 1978 blizzard. I remember the National Guard coming down Revere Street with their amphibious vehicles. Helicopters were dropping food items into areas that were still impossible to reach by motor vehicle days later. The Revere high school was closed for three weeks because it was being used as a shelter. Many residents in low-lying areas had their homes completely destroyed by sea water.

That was the New England storm that all other storms are measured by. Some areas had 40 inches of snow but the main problem was caused by the wind and coastal flooding. It was basically a Cat 2 hurricane with snow.

All of this, of course, are pictures from back in 1978. Want to clarify for those who think this is happening now.

One of the incredible things about 1978 that I read about is that the 1978 storm hit after the morning commute while everyone was at work, hence the attempt to get back home as seen in these amazing pictures. Add to that the high tide. Pretty messed up.

There were small residential streets in Buffalo that almost never saw plows due to city mismanagement.

So the residents would go out and shovel out the section of the street immediately in front of their house. Thus the whole street got cleared.

They didn’t like it but had no choice.