Do you remember the big nor'easter? Lets hear your tale of the biggest blizzard in New England history!

I was 13 years old.....it was quite amazing and something I will never forget! Hard to believe its been 29 years since! So much snow so fast! The storm as I remember just came barreling in like a freight train and paralyzed the area in just a few short hours and continued to snow for like 30 hours non-stop! The conditions with the high winds were the worst I have ever seen.....white out conditions and I don't mean like the sissy white out conditions we see most of the time.......we were unable to see the fence 10 feet in front of my house for hours on end! The streetlight in front of my house was a dim blur all night long!! No school for 2 weeks and no cars for 1 week....heck they didn't even get the main street plowed for 8 days!! People pulling sleds full of groceries and the stores running out of most everything! That is why when there is a storm now....everyone stocks up just in case! That was a monster storm for sure! Its the one all other storms are compared to and I doubt we will see a storm like that again in our lifetime!

Lets hear your stories of the Great Blizzard of 1978!!

ah BF, i can't remember what i did yesterday,let alone "78". :doh:

I was driving a tow truck for AAA, it was hell.
VB

A good read on one sad incident from the Blizzard of 78 (Gloucester)is a book titled "Ten hours till dawn"

I worked as a truck driver for an excavating contractor way back then.. I plowed and sanded for 76 hours straight through, we didn't get it as bad as Boston and the south shore did.. my boss took off for Boston with his 10 wheeler and the D8 on the flatbed.. he got confiscated by the National Gaurd on Rt. 3, and spent the next 11 days in Hull!
He made some serious money on that one...

I was working on a sanitation vehicle since 4am that morning . By 9am was stuck in a large snow drift trying to pick up one of my last dumpsters for the day . lots of snow for sure .

Its one of my only memories in life , then there was the GI that got squished by an M60 tank in May 78 . the rest of 78 is a blank

In my mothers womb kicking while they were driving home on 128 and almost didn't make it....

I was stuck in a luxury hotel at a business conference. Boy it sucked :)

Worked my ass off. My wife was stuck at the hospital and slept on the blood donor table every night for five days.

At the Pub across from the Town Beach in Wellfleet Center watching the storm and the Harbor. Boss was buying, we got plowed...

I am sorry I missed it- I was in school in St Louis.

I do remember the February 8-10 storm of 1969 which was known as the NY Mayor John Lindsay storm. No plows on Long Island for 5 days. A woman on my street went into labor and everyone came out of their houses and shoveled the streets to get her out. That was the big one of my childhood.

working in a kitchen @ a state hospital cooking 15.000 meals a day for 6 days straight.and only making 1.65 a hour a long time ago..

Before WWF - "Super Fly, Jimmy Snooker" came along....I was perfecting his jump off the top ropes from the top rail of the porch in my yard diving into the great white abyss - and that wasn't even the best part....the best part was finding my way back to the porch steps in snow over my head :laughs:

I was 11 years old, which made the snow that much deeper. I doubt we could get a storm big enough to close school for two weeks these days. I do remember the National Guard jeeps/trucks that came to shovel out the town. What I remember most was the amazing height of the drifts, opening my front door to a Wall of White and the poor dog was just hopeless tryiing to move through it. Has some of the highest totals here on the North Shore and the heftiest winds as well. Thinking about it now, I am glad I was eleven when it happened... :bounce:

I was a fetus.

I was a fetus.

Young Whippersnapper....


I was in Balt'more

I was eight. Probably out in front of my house in a snow fort throwing snowballs at passing vehicles.

Junior year at UMass Amherst.... Was in a fatal car accident on Feb. 11. Driver, who died, was a frat brother. Booze and road conditions...
Like it was yesterday....

i was in the mountains in Cali :wavey:
thinking i'm in the right place at the right time.... :btu:

Twenty five and in Ma. shoveling, helping people with stuck cars, partying it up :cheers:

Me and BigPete cruising and taking pictures of the destruction of Scituate in his Land Rover. Buying off the National Guard with coffee and cigarettes to get up close for the really good shots.

I was a senior in high school, I stupidly put the trash out that night :doh: and it wasn't seen for quite a while:spin:
My brother had no hot water in his dorm at Northeastern so he hitchhiked home on the expressway to Rockland and walked the rest to Abington. I worked at the supermarket bagging and since it was right down the street, I ended up with so many hours the manager kinda freaked when he saw I was almost over 40 hours. It was a riot seeing everyone parking their toboggans and sleds outside instead of cars. Streets were a mess, no school for a long time, atleast a week. That storm paralyzed the area, 128 was awful. I remember it being very hard to open the door and the dog bumming out.
We had a bad storm around 69 also where we made some awesome snow caves.

I was 11. My memory may be wrong but I seem to remember watching a hockey game on my 9" white&black TV (channel 38 thru the UHF antenna). The snow went right over the 4" fence between my parents yard and ours. 2 staright weeks with no school. My father was the skipper on a state senator's dragger. Senator used his connections to get the staties to allow the engineer to drive down from Watertown so they could go fishing.

I was 16 we walked around and 4 of us shoveled 4 driveways for 20 bucks apiece we scored 2 ounces of weed and drove around getting high for a few days/nights we were stopped a couple of times and they told us to get off the roads.

I was a fetus.
I was just turning into an itch.. wasn't a fetus for a few more months..

I wonder how many births happened 9months AFTER the storm? :love:

I was 14,
Don't remember all the details other than we had no school for 2 - 3 weeks!
I think we are due for another storm like that, at this point I'll settle for any amount of snow!
My plow trucks have worked 00000 hrs this winter :err: :crying: :crying:

Remember the Bean Pot was snowed in at the Garden?!?!?!:btu:

Slip....you grow up in Abington?

I moved to MA from Minnesota the week after the Bliizard when I was 11. I remember getting here and thinking, "they call this snow?"

Schools were closed that week and then again the following week for the school vacation. We lived at the Yankee Drummer Inn in Auburn for a those 2 weeks because our house in Westborough wasn't ready yet.

Remember the Bean Pot was snowed in at the Garden?!?!?!:btu:

Slip....you grow up in Abington?

My dad caught the last train out of boston. He was talking about it this past Christmas.

I was 28 and remember getting out of work and flooring my camaro to make it up a hill to get home!!!
Made it and was home with the wife and kids for the next 5 days!!!
Never saw a storm like that, and hope I never see one like that ever again!!!

Did you guys know it was coming. If we had a storm like that I would be screwed. Don't exactly keep the cabinets stocked.

I was 11, no school for almost two weeks I think. Luckily our garage was connected so we could get to the shovels. Snow drifts were higher than the front door. We had to shovel out from the inside. A guy in the neighborhood had a snowmobile and he tied on a toboggan and made trips to the Purity Supreme in Weymouth so we could all get food. Was pretty much a full time job for the guy for awhile.

My father worked for Mass Electric. A crew from some electric company in Quebec was sent down to work with him since so many power lines were down. He worked 20 hours on, then 4 off for sleep, then 20 on again.....for six weeks, seven days a week. With the union rules, he said he made almost a years pay in that time :rtfm:

Not that it was as bad as '78, but that storm on April 1st, in 96 or 97 was a doozy. I lost power for a week. No heat or hot water (god, the showers were brutal). Top 25 feet of a 60 or 70 foot pine missed my living room by inches. And the funny thing was that there was no snow when I went to bed and by 5 AM we were buried.

I was copying a thread from SOL :laugha:

I was watching cartoons in the house wondering why Mom and Dad would not let us out to play in the snow.

Has anyone read Ten Hours until Dawn? I read it last fall and could not put it down. Lots of stuff went on in the Blizzard that I did not know about.

I was 11, no school for almost two weeks I think. Luckily our garage was connected so we could get to the shovels. Snow drifts were higher than the front door. We had to shovel out from the inside. A guy in the neighborhood had a snowmobile and he tied on a toboggan and made trips to the Purity Supreme in Weymouth so we could all get food. Was pretty much a full time job for the guy for awhile.

My father worked for Mass Electric. A crew from some electric company in Quebec was sent down to work with him since so many power lines were down. He worked 20 hours on, then 4 off for sleep, then 20 on again.....for six weeks, seven days a week. With the union rules, he said he made almost a years pay in that time :rtfm:

Not that it was as bad as '78, but that storm on April 1st, in 96 or 97 was a doozy. I lost power for a week. No heat or hot water (god, the showers were brutal). Top 25 feet of a 60 or 70 foot pine missed my living room by inches. And the funny thing was that there was no snow when I went to bed and by 5 AM we were buried.

Purity Supreme:laugha: :laugha: I think there might actually still be one of them in Reading, MA

Luds...I bet your plug cabinets are always full?:rolleyes:

Luds...I bet your plug cabinets are always full?:rolleyes:

yeah.....with cases of Bombers.

Never saw a storm like that, and hope I never see one like that ever again!!!
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you will.... :blush: again ...part of global warming is more precipitation

chunks of greenland ice will be floating in the bay... :rtfm:

Luds...I bet your plug cabinets are always full?:rolleyes:

One of the biggest plug whores I've ever met :bl:

I was a fetus.

i was still two years away from conception

I was born in Nov. of '78. 9 months later. hmmmmm

One of the biggest plug whores I've ever met :bl:


oh....he said plug cabinets. i have plugs in my kitchen.:uhuh: plastics go in the cabinets. wood hangs.

not to switch topics....

but i remember a bigger blizzard than 78... ok

it was in the late 50's early 60's .....i remember it

because when we opened the front door to the house
(it opened inwards) there was a wall of snow
you couldn't even see outside ,,,just a huge snow drift.

Hood milk used to deliver our milk
and the postman would deliver to your
mailbox on the porch in those days

we had a snow tunnel all the way
from the front door to the street.

but the kicker was the snow on the opposite side.
we lived in a 3 story house and the snow drift went clear
up to the bottom of the second story windows 15' or more
feet high... i remember jumping out that second story window
to slide down the snow...... >>>>>>>>NOT <<<<<<<<<<<<
i submerged myself into a snow bank and almost sufficated in it..

it was a royally stupid thing to do.... i managed to dig out but it
took me awhile... :hs:

i was still two years away from conception

i was 11 years away..

i agree that were due for another storm like this cause of global warming.. but, i hope we don't get one that big. :pop:

Raven, I remember that storm. I think it was 1957, I hadn't started school yet. My family drove from Southern Ohio to North Truro in it. I can remember being hypnotized by snowflakes coming at the windshield for hours on end. We finally got there and the next day Dad's 54 Chevy was buried, all that showed was the ball on the antenna. The kid across the street was digging tunnels but my folks wouldn't let me out. I was POed.

I was living in Pawtucket. I measured a level 44" in the back yard. There were drifts as high as my grandmother's garage next door.

The storm also created one of those quintessential Row Dylun legends--Joe Garrahy's red plaid shirt, which now sits in some kind of Rhody hall of fame :read:

I was a 21 year old seaman in the Coast Guard on Nantucket, 6 to 10"of snow, but it was all in drifts as the wind was gusting to over 90. I left the island that weekend and couldn't believe my eyes.

Left work in Providence, RI, at 3:00 PM for home in West Warwick, less than 10 miles. On the way, among other things, I pushed a few cars, made up a few new swears and scored the last package of peanut butter crackers at a thoroughly gutted Cumberland Farms. Made it home a mere 7 hours later walking the last 2 miles through 3 foot plus drifts. Any of you guys who know me will attest, drifts of those proportions are almost over my head. Anyway after almost 3 days of digging out, made it out in time to celebrate my 26th birthday doing the Arctic (downtown W.W. strip)crawl. Didn't have to watch out for cars, there weren't any. Good thing. A night like that would have killed me today!!!

Remember the Bean Pot was snowed in at the Garden?!?!?!:btu:

Slip....you grow up in Abington?


8 Years old, at the Beanpot with my father. We actually made it home.

I was 6 years old in NJ - I remeber a few big storms but not one in particular

Was 11 yrs old. Grew up in Falmouth. I remember being unable to open the doors as drifts were higher. Once we dug out, we built tunnels through the yard in the snow. Also took a trip to our cottage in N. Truro (I think same time) and the snow/ice on the beach was over our heads with crakcks all in it. Like a maze. We had no idea it was coming. Were out to dinner at Golden Sails chinese in E. Falmouth when snow started. white out by the time we finished.

i was 7 years old i remember the snow was level with our front steps.my dad didnt make it home from work he was stuck for 3 days

In 03 we got more snow then 78 but the winds weren't bad. So I'm sure there will be more of this weather to come. Esp with the global warming trends of spikes in either extremes of warm or cold.

I lived in Scituate where I grew up for the 78 blizzard but take away the deadly tides and winds the blizzard of 05 here in Plymouth dumped a lot more snow than we saw in Scituate in 78.

I was working for Lynn Porche Audi at the time,I left work at 10:AM driving a 1967 Dodge power wagon all wheel drive(former milatary vehicle) with a snow plow, it took me 4 hours to get home when it normaly was a 30 minute drive... I plowed snow for two days straight and did snow removal for a week... I made enough money, with my trade and a little of my savings to buy a brand new ford F 250 with a plow and paid cash!

Left Stoughton at noon and drove to Brockton. Didn't go to work until the next Monday. I'd say the snow was 36" when it all stopped.
Remember the wicked storm two weeks before the blizzard ? That one is in the books too.

I-95's Exchange Street overpass in Pawtucket

"Heavy snow tonight,tapering off tomorrow"

That's what the weather page of The Providence Journal said on Monday morning, Feb. 6, 1978.

Blizzard of '78: Storm statistics

Official snowfall: 28.6 inches at T.F. Green Airport, the National Weather Service measuring station. During the most intense 24 hours, 27.6 inches fell, a record dating to 1905.

Deepest Weather Service-listed unofficial snowfall: 54 inches, Woonsocket.

Least unofficial snowfall: 10 inches, Block Island.

Most intense snowfall: 3 inches/hour Feb. 6, 7 to 8 p.m.

Biggest wind gust: 58 knots, or 67 mph, Feb. 6, 8 p.m.

Duration: Began Feb. 6 at 10:10 a.m.; ended Feb. 7 at 10:44 p.m.

Deaths attributed to Blizzard: 21 (in Rhode Island).

Cars abandoned on Routes 95, 195 and 146: 1,950.

Abandoned cars towed from Providence streets: 3,000.

Drivers who spent first night in cars: 1,000.

Motorists rescued by Rhode Island National Guard: 2,968.

Children stranded overnight in schools: 900.

Shelters opened: 66.

Persons sheltered: 9,150.

Trips by National Guard ferrying doctors, nurses, medicine: 3,527.

Home, businesses losing electric power: 11,800.

U.S. military rescue force: 478 soldiers, 178 vehicles.

Pieces of equipment rented from Buffalo, N.Y.: 100.

City's initial estimate of snow-clearing force: 100 pieces.

City's later estimate of snow-clearing force: 8 pieces.

State of emergency declared: Feb. 6 at 5 p.m.

Providence reopened to business: Feb. 13

Cost to state: $6.6 million, expenses and lost taxes.

Total federal disaster assistance: $14,841,484.

Federal snow-removal aid: $4,272,116.

Food stamps: $7,665,768 to an estimated 90,000 people.

Lost wages, private sector: $30 million.

Workers who lost wages: 152,000.

Unemployment benefits paid: $8 million.

Homes damaged: 30.

Looting suspects charged: 25.

Iwas in college in Boston ( Boston State College) and lived in Brookline in a second floor apt we jumped to get out to shovel the front enterance. Spent two days delivering meds to people on Xcountry skis out of the Kenmore Red Cross until some guy asked if I could swim- spent the next 5 days in a duk in Revere pulling people and pets out of flooded houses. Talk about friggen cold and wet. But something I'll never forget.

Raven...my Dad was a milkman for H.P. Hood......where did you live?:)

Selinsgrove, PA. Only thing I remember is working mega hours in the cafeteria, drinking way to much Genessey Cream Ale, and getting caught stealing wood so we could have a fire in the fireplace in our fraternity house.

I was running a 966 cat loader in Boston. I made a ton of money on the side:)

we were snowed in...I lived on a hill and had a clear view of the S.E. Expressway out my kitchen window from about a 1/2 mile away.....it was my birthday...I skied down my hill a zillion times...and all around the neighborhood.....GREAT memories of that storm....

I left Worcester that morning at 5am, it was a Monday and the friday before we had gotten 20 inches of snow on Grafton Hill, my old section of town. I was enroute to United Shoe Machine on the Beverley/Danvers line on rt. 62 for a meeting for an Electrical Project I was pm'ing.

As soon as I got there at 7:30 the guys at the loading dock told me I had a message from my boss, Ted Coghlin jr of Coghlin Electrical Contractors for me to call him. He had been watching the weather on the tv stations and it was not good. He told me to forget the meeting and get home to the shop asap back in Worcester.

I had bundles of sched 40 Galvi steel conduit in the back of my company pick up and decided to keep them in the truck and not drop them off as I would need the weight. I went back to rt. 128 on rt 62. As I passed a White Hen Pantry on the banks of the Danvers River the water was already coming over into the store parking lot. I got On Rt. 128 south and it took an hour to get from rt. 62 to rt. 114 where I made the decision to take 114 to 495s.

Best decision I ever made. It took 6 and a half hours to get to Worcester in 4 wheel drive with the pipe in the back helping to weigh me down. I parked the truck in front of my house and did not see it again until Wednesday Mornning as we shoveled it out of a ten foot drift that buried it.

Me and my cat Nina just partied for three days. Talk about wasted.

It was my senior year in high school. I remember the radio or tv calling for light flurries that morning. As I was getting in my car the snow started, those really small flakes. My dad told me " You'll be home early today." About 15 minutes after school started it was cancelled. The principal's last words to us all: Drive carefully." While waiting to turn onto Turnpike Ave I was rear ended. I got out of the car to check the damage only to find out it was the principal who hit me :)
There was a group of us who stood on the side of Bristol Ferry Road and dug people out of the snow drifts that they slammed into. We made some good money doing that and doing driveways the next couple of days. Boy did we party too!

Great thread. I was in pharmacology class at Northeastern. There was a dude that interupted the prof. with a note. Get out of class PDQ. Funny, when we got out of class, it was only flurries. By the time I got to the expressway it was like the commercial, follow the lights in front of you. Lucky to make it home in my '71 Pinto. I loved that car. Many of my friends got stuck on 128 and had to stay over in the cinema in Dedham. They ended up walking home a day or two later.
After the driving curfew, the town of Randolph experinced alot of issues with public drunkeness. Shut all the bars and package stores down. Luckily, the supermarket I worked at had a beer and wine section. Boy, I was the hero for a day.
It got a little chippy at home when I would share the brewskies with big bros.
Wild storm, the drifts that covered my pinto and my dads truck ran all the way up to the garage roof.

I was born in Nov. of '78. 9 months later. hmmmmm
Snow boomer :bl:

living in ct. governor ella grasso declared state of emergency.rt 91 and 95 were clogged with abandoned cars.i was working and left work at 3pm on a state road and got home to my street that was clogged with snow and got stuck in middle of road in front of my driveway.neighbor who worked for a contractor came shortly after driving a big payloader,put bucket under rear bumper and pushed me into my driveway.next day after he had plowed all nite he came home and plowed our street and we could get out.never saw snowed so high along roadways and parking lots.placed where i was working did'nt get plowed out for 3 days.

i was nine...and i remember building snow forts in what seemed like mountains of snowbanks...also remember the north shore getting hammered by a massive surf....

i was 14 at the time and remember being let out of school early that day and walking home from 3rd street in a white out. Also I remember the Peter Stuyvesant sinking next to Anthony's Pier 4 and the fishing pier at Castle Island completely twisted apart.

I worked for MA BELL in hull,cohasset,and scituate.A friend called me to help get out of his basement appt.in hull.the water was pouring down the stairs as we grabbed what we could and drove out with water coming in the doors of my 76f-250.We got to higher ground and stopped to watch lobsters and tommy cod swimming where we had just left.We couldn't resist,we went into the water and grabbed appx.35lobsters in less than 10 mins and got out of town to my appt.in weymouth landing.We invited evryone from the bar accross the street and stuffed ourselves.I used my new x-country skis to get to peoples houses to fix their phones.Alot of houses in scituate & cohasset the phone cable was at eye height on the skis.Then we started on body recovery duty[3 people were missing in scituate] we tied lines to our climbing belts and dug into houses filled with rubble looking for the missing.The devistation was unbelievable.But truthfully it was alot of fun working together with all kinds of people for the "cause".I could go on and on with stories.I was 27 yrs old.and the partys oh man!!!! The police chief in Braintree closed all the package stores and bars I think it was on the thind day after the storm.

I was living over in Hong Kong then, so I missed it. Saw Gloria, Bob, and the Perfect Storm, all three of those in Newport.

week after was in boston with son for hockey game.people had put chairs in street where they had sholved out there cars to protect parking space.drove down to scituate where there was no snow near water.storm blew in so fierce houses and cottages moved off foundations and were across the street from where they had been.trees had line of snow on side facing water where wind had blown it.about 2 blocks from water there was alot of snow.i think the storm hit at high tide.

I was 9 years old and in CT. Can remember the monstorous snow banks. We actually went sledding on them and played street hockey in the street for days. I remember the payloader too Hesh2....

Ice

I was in downtown Providence at Spiedel. Working for IBM. Left at 4:00 PM and made it to Burrillville at 11:00 PM. I had a Ford F250 4X4 and drove up the median strip on RT 95 to 295. 7:00 hours drive. Killer.

Snow boomer :bl:

yeah, I was apparently being conceived as well.... I was born in Nov of 78. Oh it's a great story my parents love to tell my friends and embarass me with.... my Dad was in the National Guard at the time came home on a snowmobile...blah blah blah,..... here I am....

I got snowed in with my girlfriend for a week ..:humpty: The blizzard of 78 was the peak of my :humpty: career... Look back at it fondly ..:jump1:

I was a third grader. Went sledding at my neighbor's farm and hit a tree head on on my trusty double runner. Broken wrist! Mom drove me 15 miles to the hospital in HEAVY snow. Boy was she pissed!

I was 2

At the Pub across from the Town Beach in Wellfleet Center watching the storm and the Harbor. Boss was buying, we got plowed...

"The Bomb Shelter"?

i was sitting in my tractor-trailer at the state line truck stop at the conn. r.i. state line. waited 4 days for the state to plow 95. you gotta love this state.
p.s. the conn roads were clear.

lookie what I found
http://www.striped-bass.com/gallery/files/1/6/1/5/amesstbrockton78blizzard.jpg
http://www.striped-bass.com/gallery/files/1/6/1/5/78blizzard.jpg

I also grew up in Scituate,Ma. During the storm I lived on Kent St. and across the salt marsh from Pegoty beach 2 streets up from the harbor the apt I lived at was up high on a hill and lived above a girl Sherry who worked at the Bell Bouy Resturant/ BAR:eyes: those from Scituate will remember her great floatation devices but she had very intimidating boyfriend ,Oh ya the STORM:conf:
I remember walking downtown past Quincy oil and seeing the NO WAKE sign floating past the TOWN PUMP Cleaners the waves were crashing over the houses on pegotty beach , I worked for Allen Wheeler Co. and P/T at Scituate harbor marina behind Pier 44 resturant , I hauled alot of debris snow and me and my bud Chris O'neil whose Dad owned the marina had to rebuild the ramp to the marina and gather all the floating walkways .
I remember walking up to 3rd cliff and seeing the helicopters flying up and down the coast line very low . Oh man Lighthouse Pt, Sand Hills , Minot, unbelivable , .
I know Stripersniper and Big Pete saw the same if not more.
I grew up on Ridge hill rd across from Pegotty Beach and before Kent St & Driftway were built up any extream hightide or storm reaked Havoc in that aera I used to have small boats in my back yard
I had a blast growing up there .
Link Sr

ps :the night of the storm at the downstairs of the Bell Bouy the CARS were playing ,that band got their start there