The Blizzard of '22 (or was it '21? Well, it was twenty-something)

They don’t make blizzards the way they used to.

The blizzard of '78 shut down Route 128

How did they make them once upon a time? On February 5, 1978, my wife, Betty, and I boarded a 7:30 a.m. flight from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport to New York LaGuardia. The forecast for New York was ‘light snow’. As we circled LaGuardia waiting to land, our pilot announced the airport had just closed and we were being diverted to Hartford. There, we were the last plane to land before Bradley Field was also closed. The airline put us on a bus, which skidded off snow-and-ice-covered I-91 15 miles south of Hartford. A second bus got as far as New Haven and we were told to take the train for the rest of the trip into the city. We managed to squeeze ourselves and our luggage onto the only Boston-to-New-York train that completed its run that day. We arrived at Penn Station at 8 p.m. with New York reeling under two feet of unplowed snow. And, we were the lucky ones: an untold number of motorists were trapped in or abandoned their cars on Boston’s Route 128 when snowplows were unable to keep up with the three feet of snow that fell.

That was a blizzard. It came, seemingly, out of nowhere; catching everyone by surprise. It created real-life tales of hardship endured and heart-warming stories of families taking in strangers. Forty-four years later, The Blizzard of ’78 is still one of the life-defining events for those who were there.

We had a blizzard here in Massachusetts over the weekend. It came complete with white-out conditions for hours on end, hurricane-force winds along the coast, and up to 30 inches of snow with drifts as high as a Boston Celtics center. Medfield, where I live, got about 20 inches over twelve hours – about half of it falling in a three-hour period in mid-afternoon.

This map was published three days
before the storm hit

The difference was, we knew it was coming. In fact, we knew the storm’s track six days earlier when it was nothing more than some scattered snow showers over the Pacific Northwest. Aided by sophisticated computer models, forecasters predicted this system would intensify as it moved east, then dip south to pick up energy from the Gulf of Mexico, combine with a low-pressure system that would form off the North Carolina, dump modest amount of snow in the Appalachians, then explode east of Long Island in something called ‘bombogenesis’.

Two days before the storm

The storm did exactly what forecasters said it would do. The only question was what would happen when it passed over some longitude and latitude marker south of Nantucket. Like a ‘Y’ intersection, it could take the left fork and dump its load of snow over one part of New England, or the right fork and clobber Cape Cod. The only speculation was over the site of the ‘jackpot zone’, which turned out to be the towns of Sharon and Stoughton, some twelve miles east of here. Something called ‘the European Model’ got the track exactly right 72 hours before the first flakes fell.

The day before the storm

Obedient to the forecast, we stocked up on groceries and wine two days before the storm. Knowing the storm’s duration (8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday), I did not go out and shovel when there was a lull. The electricity never went out (and we have a whole-house generator to back up Eversource). With a warm house full of books and streamed entertainment, we could fairly ignore what was going on outside.

And, apart from snow, what was going out outside? Nothing. The highways were empty of traffic. Our favorite bakery had a notice on its website they would be closed on Saturday, but re-open Sunday at 6 a.m. No one showed up at our door seeking shelter.

Is it still a blizzard if there’s no uncertainty concerning its outcome?

If you live on the coast...

There are some for whom the above is an outrageous statement. If you live on an ocean or bay – or worse, on a barrier island – every storm is an existential threat. But living in such a location is a conscious decision. You knew what you were getting into when you built or purchased your home, and have been reminded of that bargain every time a house up the shore from you disappears in a hurricane or nor’easter.

Me, shoveling Sunday morning

But I digress. The simple fact is, I just went through the first New England blizzard in three years, and it felt like a re-made-for-Netflix version of a movie I’ve seen a dozen times before. With Betty still incapacitated from her foot surgery, I dutifully used our snow blower to clear the driveway Sunday morning then, with a shovel, tackled the sidewalk, mailbox, and end-of-driveway plug of ice deposited by the town’s plows. My reward for three hours work was my first cup of hot chocolate of the season... and lots of ibuprofen.

It’s a sad state of affairs when you can go through a day-long snow storm and know with great certainty that, a year from now, you’ll have absolutely no recollection of it. The National Weather Service now gives winter storms names. This one should have been called, ‘Meh’.