The Blizzard of ‘78

 

It was the most catastrophic storm to hit Massachusetts in over 200 years. And I was caught smack-dab in the middle of it.

To provide a little background, my husband and I moved to MA in 1977. I grew up in California, so although I could visit snow in the mountains, I’d never lived in a snowy locale.

On this particular day, February 5, 1978, I headed to work down Route 9 from Framingham, the sun shining, expecting a routine day at the savings bank I worked at in Chestnut Hill. Except for a couple of turns early in my journey, it was a straight shot to work. That would be a great benefit to me on my drive home.

The snow began falling in the afternoon. We had no idea what was coming. By the time I left work, the snow had coated everything. I had never driven in a blizzard; you could say that my naivete nearly killed me.

As I turned onto Route 9, there were still cars on the road. But the visibility was nearly down to zero. I figured, hey, I’ll just take my time and follow the lane lines. It wasn’t too long until I realized that the lane lines had disappeared and so had my visibility. I was afraid to pull over because I couldn’t see cars behind me or locate the side of the road. Now and then I’d see car brake lights which told me I was still on the correct side of the road. So I just kept going.

Two hours and one flat tire later (the ride normally took 35 minutes) I miraculously found my driveway. I have no idea how I got there. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.

My husband’s company let employees go home early. He took the bus from Boston to a shopping center near our home where he picked up his car. I had no way to tell him I was on my way, although it would have made no difference. I was on my own.

We went to bed early assuming from the news that everything would be shut down the next day. The authorities hadn’t yet declared a bank holiday but the decision was imminent. So we slept in. Imagine my surprise when the bank president called early in the morning to ask if I could open up our branch because the branch manager hadn’t made it home. It’s a good thing I was half asleep because I don’t remember my response but I doubt that our Code of Conduct would allow me to include it here. The bank holiday was declared shortly thereafter.

Highlights of the week ahead:

Everything was shut down for a week, including driving on local roads.

We decided to walk to the local mini-mart, knowing the shelves would probably be empty. They were.

We saw a front-end loader from the city clearing our own street. My husband and our neighbor bribed, er, paid him to clear out our driveways. We had no snow thrower at the time, so we would have needed weeks to move the snow.

How bad was it? Boston received 27.1 inches, which was a record at the time. (We had at least 5-8” more in the suburbs.) The storm killed approximately 100 people in the Northeast and injured around 4,500.

Did I mention that we had forest fires in Orange County when we left CA for MA? And when we left MA, we moved to Parker, CO, in 1980. In 1982, we had the Denver blizzard:

The official tally by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was 23.8 inches. Some areas received a good deal more, closer to 29 inches. Does it really matter how much? Life in the city was seriously disrupted. Roads were impassable. No one could get to work. Those who were at work didn’t make it home.

Fortunately, we were at home that day. No sweat.

Now we live in central Florida. We only get hurricanes and tornadoes here.

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  1. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    When we moved to Ma (eventually not far from Framingham) in the late 80’s, that all I heard about – the Blizzard of ’78.  Then one afternoon it started snowing – they let people out early again from work, just like then. My husband picked me up (we both worked in Needham) and lived in Stoughton on the South Shore. The drive took 45 minutes on the back roads. That drive took almost from what I remember, about 6 hours.  It was gridlock and the snow was getting very deep.  No one was prepared. It was a “nightmeaa!”.  I don’t miss those blizzards and like Susan, am also in FL.  The ice, the snow plows pushing more snow back into a shoveled driveway, the shoveling with a bad back – the heating bills! Sometimes it was late spring before it all melted! The forsythia and daffodils were a welcome sight!!

    • #61
  2. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    I was in central Ohio, the snow was not as deep, but I was working mostly outside that day.  Bagging groceries, loading up cars, and worst of all retrieving shopping carts.  I had only had a driver’s license for a month and a half or so, and that storm was the beginning of about six weeks of below freezing temps.  Back then, they didn’t plow residential areas, so there was ten inches of snow in the streets that whole time, so cold it was like sand.  That’s when I learned to drive in snow.

    • #62
  3. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Judge Mental (View Comment):
    That’s when I learned to drive in snow.

    So you were a teen-ager, huh! Let me imagine your doing spins and figure eights in the car . . .

    • #63
  4. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    78? How about the Blizzard of ’66? Drifts were covering entire two-story houses. All you whippersnappers and ’78.

    • #64
  5. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Arahant (View Comment):

    78? How about the Blizzard of ’66? Drifts were covering entire two-story houses. All you whippersnappers and ’78.

    How sweet? Being called a whippersnapper at my age? Cool!

    • #65
  6. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):
    How sweet? Being called a whippersnapper at my age? Cool!

    Thought you’d appreciate it. But you were probably still in California in 66.

    • #66
  7. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):
    That’s when I learned to drive in snow.

    So you were a teen-ager, huh! Let me imagine your doing spins and figure eights in the car . . .

    Yeah definitely, but mostly just doing the Tokyo Drift around corners.

    • #67
  8. TallCon Inactive
    TallCon
    @TallCon

    Thanks for this post.  I was nine at the time.  We lived in Rocky Hill outside of Hartford.

    When you’re nine you think everything is the biggest, the coldest, the best, the worst.  I remembered this winter being terrible. There was snow to the top of our roof!  (We lived at the bottom of a hill.)  My little brother disappeared in the snow when he got out of the car!  (I’ve since heard that same story happening to others with a not at all comical ending.)  We didn’t have outside recess for months!  We got out of school the week before the Fourth of July!  (True.)  My mother was a nurse and all the roads were closed so a snowplow came and picked her up and she didn’t come home for days.  (Fortunately Dad was a golf pro and didn’t work in the winter.)

    Over the years I dismissed a lot of it as the experience of a nine year old.  Then on the 30th anniversary there were news stories about this storm.  In Arizona!  I saw the pictures and read the stories and heard about the deaths.

    It was definitely a storm to remember.

    And yes, I remember the Civic Center collapsing.

    Curiously enough we moved to Phoenix, Arizona that next August.

    • #68
  9. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Percival (View Comment):

    We could talk about heat waves killing people in the north. We don’t get a heat wave and have old people die.

    • #69
  10. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):
    We don’t get a heat wave and have old people die.

    That’s because they died young of fire ants.

    • #70
  11. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    And killer bee attacks.

    • #71
  12. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Arahant (View Comment):

    And killer bee attacks.

    Blood sucked completely out by skeeters. 

    • #72
  13. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    Arahant (View Comment):

    78? How about the Blizzard of ’66? Drifts were covering entire two-story houses. All you whippersnappers and ’78.

    Blizzard of ’66 aftermath in Syrcause. Since Lake Ontario is so deep it almost never freezes over, the wind picking up moisture from the lake can create some hellacious snowfalls (which is the same thing that created that freaky situation in Buffalo a few years ago, when the winds off of not-yet-frozen Lake Erie dumped 6 1/2 feet of late fall snow on the south side of town, while the north side, where the winds only blew across the Niagara River, barely got 4-6 inches on the ground).

    • #73
  14. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    TallCon (View Comment):
    We didn’t have outside recess for months!

    This had to be the very worst part!!! Your poor teacher! Actually I’m glad that you and your family came through it okay. It’s not often that our recollections from childhood match up with our adult selves!

    • #74
  15. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Jon1979 (View Comment):
    Blizzard of ’66 aftermath in Syrcause.

    And nine months later a friend of mine was born in Syracuse. Coincidence? I think not.

    • #75
  16. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    I’ve been wondering about the 1960s. I remember having the entire month of January off from school one year–it could have been 1966. Between midyears and the nonstop snowstorms, the town I grew up in north of Boston was completely shut down. I remember snow banks taller than I was. 

    And much more recently, about ten years ago, my son went to the University of Montana, and he brought his skis with him, of course. :-) That year, Missoula had almost no snow and we on Cape Cod got a whopping 108 inches. I sent my son a silly graphic I made up: Ski Cape Cod! 

    The thing the climate change hysterics don’t understand is that the climate is always changing. One would think that people who believed ardently in evolution and who study the changes in biology and geology over million-year periods would realize that before the rest of us. :-) Change is a fact of earth life. :-) It’s all about the earthquakes and volcanoes, not the lawnmowers. :-) 

    • #76
  17. Full Size Tabby Member
    Full Size Tabby
    @FullSizeTabby

    Front Seat Cat (View Comment):
    Then one afternoon it started snowing – they let people out early again from work, just like then. My husband picked me up (we both worked in Needham) and lived in Stoughton on the South Shore. The drive took 45 minutes on the back roads. That drive took almost from what I remember, about 6 hours. It was gridlock and the snow was getting very deep. No one was prepared. It was a “nightmeaa!”.

    During our time in Rochester NY we learned that snows that started in the middle of the day combined with employers and schools letting out early created the worst combination. The early release put lots of cars on the road that would get stuck and prevent the snowplows from clearing the streets. 

    One of the few times I didn’t get to work was when we got a faster-than-expected snowfall (about 3 – 4 inches per hour, eventually totaling 18 inches) during the morning commute time. I and others started for work. Many got stuck. I saw that people were getting stuck, so I turned around and headed home, made it to and up my street, and then got stuck trying to get back into my driveway. Having so many cars stuck in the road made clearing the roads of snow much more difficult than normal. 

    • #77
  18. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    • #78
  19. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    • #79
  20. TallCon Inactive
    TallCon
    @TallCon

    MarciN (View Comment):

    I’ve been wondering about the 1960s.

    I know, right?  Oh wait, there was more?  I’ll let you continue…

    • #80
  21. CACrabtree Coolidge
    CACrabtree
    @CACrabtree

    Yup, I remember it well.  My place of employment was at the Computer Center for the old City National Bank and Trust in Columbus, Ohio.  As I recall, when I drove to work that morning (about 0700H) the sky was a really weird, almost yellow, color and their was just a little snow falling.  At about 0830H the fun really started with gale force winds and whipping snow.  At about 1000H, management told us that we could go home.  Although my apartment was only about a mile from the computer center, it took me nearly an hour to get there.  By about 1600H that afternoon, everyone in Columbus realized that we were in deep…snow.  My car, a 1976 Gremlin, was frozen to the ground for two weeks; wouldn’t even budge.  The Ohio National Guard was mobilized and threw hay down to cattle who were totally immobilized by the snow (only time I can remember that happening).

    It took Columbus weeks to dig out.  The main drag in Columbus (normally 4 lanes) was two lane well into March.  The muffler companies were doing making a fortune because of the deep ice ruts.

    I could tell a thousand stories but my bottom line was that this was no way to live.  I called a headhunter and was in sunny Dixie by May.  I didn’t move back to the Columbus area until I was safely retired in 2010.  

    Ah, fun times!

    • #81
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