Vortex
Member
I was 13. I skied. I don't remember it beign that bad. Living in the country there were little traffic issues and we were well prepared for it. heated with wood anyway and always used 4 wheel drive in the wiinter. Dirt roads.
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Skiing during blizzard of 78, anyone?
- Thread starter billski
- Start date
SkiingInABlueDream
Active member
I was 5 but I actually dont remember it even though my family was in the Hartford CT area. I love threads like this, Im a huge nostalgia fan.
I wonder what would happen if the same storm hit today. Ive never heard anyone complain bitterly about the 78 blizzard and life being shut down for a week. It always sounded to me like folks just dealt with it and got on with life as much as possible. Whereas today society seems intolerant to the smallest inconveniences. Hope I didnt hijack by saying that.
Anyone got any good pictures from that storm?
I wonder what would happen if the same storm hit today. Ive never heard anyone complain bitterly about the 78 blizzard and life being shut down for a week. It always sounded to me like folks just dealt with it and got on with life as much as possible. Whereas today society seems intolerant to the smallest inconveniences. Hope I didnt hijack by saying that.
Anyone got any good pictures from that storm?
shpride
Member
I was born a few days before and was actually brought home from the hospital during the storm. I guess that explains my love for snow.
billski
Active member
stories...
Although bread and milk are a prime staple of the panic-attack, I'll bet VT dairy farmers had to dump a lot of milk that couldn't get through.
I have some pictures from an old Kodak 110 camera, which was all I could afford. I'll try to find them and scan them in. They are grainy and a bit fuzzy though. plastic lenses were not exactly precise back then.
In WNY "blowing and drifting" was (and still is) the watchword. You could drive for a mile, road would be clear to the pavement, then you'd face an 8' drift a couple hundred feet long. The snow would drift up two sides of our homes, to the roofline. Those drifts snow was bulletproof, walkable onto the roof. After the winds died down, it was fun sledding off the roof. But during the storm, gale force winds were no fun to be out in.
The winds were the worst part. If you shoveled out your driveway, it would entirely fill back in within an hour. You had to "cut" it out in blocks. No fluffy stuff. Leaving your car at the end of the driveway, seems like a smart idea but it wasn't for two reasons. First, the @#$$ wind would actually drift snow up into the engine compartment and pretty much ruin any chance you had of starting the engine. Second, two close to the road, these multi-blade mega-plows would blow down the rural roads at 50mph and cream your car...
The first night, we put up one person in our house who had to abandon his car. It was about midnight. The farmhouse next door, much bigger than ours, billeted 9 people for two days. Our house guest couldn't stand it and after a day, walked four miles during the storm to get home.
We were "rescued" on day 3, when the sun shone through and a NY State snow clearing machine was seen in the distance. It was a 10-foot high 3-auger snowblower, on front of a huge dump truck, followed by 3 or 4 tow trucks. Man could this thing blow! He would blow for a while, then back out, a tow truck would go in and pull out a car. Repeat. It took them about 2 hours to get to our house and we could see them 2 miles away.
Although bread and milk are a prime staple of the panic-attack, I'll bet VT dairy farmers had to dump a lot of milk that couldn't get through.
I have some pictures from an old Kodak 110 camera, which was all I could afford. I'll try to find them and scan them in. They are grainy and a bit fuzzy though. plastic lenses were not exactly precise back then.
In WNY "blowing and drifting" was (and still is) the watchword. You could drive for a mile, road would be clear to the pavement, then you'd face an 8' drift a couple hundred feet long. The snow would drift up two sides of our homes, to the roofline. Those drifts snow was bulletproof, walkable onto the roof. After the winds died down, it was fun sledding off the roof. But during the storm, gale force winds were no fun to be out in.
The winds were the worst part. If you shoveled out your driveway, it would entirely fill back in within an hour. You had to "cut" it out in blocks. No fluffy stuff. Leaving your car at the end of the driveway, seems like a smart idea but it wasn't for two reasons. First, the @#$$ wind would actually drift snow up into the engine compartment and pretty much ruin any chance you had of starting the engine. Second, two close to the road, these multi-blade mega-plows would blow down the rural roads at 50mph and cream your car...
The first night, we put up one person in our house who had to abandon his car. It was about midnight. The farmhouse next door, much bigger than ours, billeted 9 people for two days. Our house guest couldn't stand it and after a day, walked four miles during the storm to get home.
We were "rescued" on day 3, when the sun shone through and a NY State snow clearing machine was seen in the distance. It was a 10-foot high 3-auger snowblower, on front of a huge dump truck, followed by 3 or 4 tow trucks. Man could this thing blow! He would blow for a while, then back out, a tow truck would go in and pull out a car. Repeat. It took them about 2 hours to get to our house and we could see them 2 miles away.
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Mark_151
Member
I was 15 and living in Marlboro, MA. I wasn't a skier, so I'm not sure what was going on at the ski hill a 1/4 mile away -- Jericho Hill, but I'm sure it was epic! At the start of the storm, I found a cat standing in the worsening snow in the back yard and let her in to "wait out the storm". She ended up gracing our lives for 13 years. Everything was shut down in town for more than a week. Pedestrians owned all the streets. Later, in the spring, a melting snowbank behind City Hall revealed a car with a corpse in it....
Breeze
Member
Nsr !
Holy cr*p, February 7th and 8th 1978.
NSR for sure.
I was working ( in HR) at EMMC in Bangor ME. The hospital switchboard blew a routing board and the hospital was without internal paging ( a High Emergency situation) just as the storm was winding up on the 7th.
About a dozen of us non-medical personnel were pressed into duty as "runners" carrying urgent messages from the switchboard operators to the various nursing stations. Everyone of us was aware that any message at any time could be a "CODE" somewhere in the hospital.
USCG dispatched a helicopter from Cape Cod with the needed board, but the flight crew had to call it quits due to high winds, and set it down in Rockland late in the afternoon on 2/7. Maine State Police picked it up in Rockland to deliver by road, but the State Police couldn't travel any faster than the MDOT snowplows. As the accidents piled up, the Staties handed the package off to the MDOT snowplows to relay from route to route. The MDOT driver for State Route 46 from Bucksport to Orrington handed it off to a Penobscot County Sheriff in his own personal vehicle and the board reached EMMC at 0400 on the 8th. I napped in the employee " lounge" for a couple hours and was back to my desk, so I spent the better part of 24 hours on the clock.
Clocked out at 5 PM on the 8th and had to GUESS which hump in the HUGE snowbank MIGHT be my car, found it after a couple of tries, and then spent a couple more hours digging out.
I was a lot younger then, it was an great adventure, and I didn't live far from the workplace. I could have left it there and walked home!
the Post Script to that storm.....
In November of '78, EMMC had the largest number of maternity admissions in its previous history, cleaned out the entire Bangor area stock of white laundry baskets ( to be used as newborn cribs) and had a limited edition run of infant Tees printed with the hospital logo and 'I'm a Blizzard Baby Born November 1978"
During that November '78 birthing blitz, another EMMC record was set. A Baby Boy was delivered of a first Time Mom at 16.2 lbs, the " Biggest Baby Ever at EMMC".
Sorry for the NSR, but yes, it was exciting!
Breze
Holy cr*p, February 7th and 8th 1978.
NSR for sure.
I was working ( in HR) at EMMC in Bangor ME. The hospital switchboard blew a routing board and the hospital was without internal paging ( a High Emergency situation) just as the storm was winding up on the 7th.
About a dozen of us non-medical personnel were pressed into duty as "runners" carrying urgent messages from the switchboard operators to the various nursing stations. Everyone of us was aware that any message at any time could be a "CODE" somewhere in the hospital.
USCG dispatched a helicopter from Cape Cod with the needed board, but the flight crew had to call it quits due to high winds, and set it down in Rockland late in the afternoon on 2/7. Maine State Police picked it up in Rockland to deliver by road, but the State Police couldn't travel any faster than the MDOT snowplows. As the accidents piled up, the Staties handed the package off to the MDOT snowplows to relay from route to route. The MDOT driver for State Route 46 from Bucksport to Orrington handed it off to a Penobscot County Sheriff in his own personal vehicle and the board reached EMMC at 0400 on the 8th. I napped in the employee " lounge" for a couple hours and was back to my desk, so I spent the better part of 24 hours on the clock.
Clocked out at 5 PM on the 8th and had to GUESS which hump in the HUGE snowbank MIGHT be my car, found it after a couple of tries, and then spent a couple more hours digging out.
I was a lot younger then, it was an great adventure, and I didn't live far from the workplace. I could have left it there and walked home!
the Post Script to that storm.....
In November of '78, EMMC had the largest number of maternity admissions in its previous history, cleaned out the entire Bangor area stock of white laundry baskets ( to be used as newborn cribs) and had a limited edition run of infant Tees printed with the hospital logo and 'I'm a Blizzard Baby Born November 1978"
During that November '78 birthing blitz, another EMMC record was set. A Baby Boy was delivered of a first Time Mom at 16.2 lbs, the " Biggest Baby Ever at EMMC".
Sorry for the NSR, but yes, it was exciting!
Breze
GrilledSteezeSandwich
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Unfortunately no because I was born in 79
Mikey1
Member
Ah the good old days! I was a senior in H.S. and we skied at Ascutney on the annual ski club trip on the Saturday and Sunday before the storm. I remember it was very cold, and when we arrived home on the bus in southern CT that Sunday night, all the parents told us we could sleep in on Monday morning because a blizzard was coming! We didn't really believe them, but sure enough next morning it was a virtual whiteout and we ended up having 3 days off from school. Built a jump in the front yard out of the 2 foot accumulation and had a blast on that for weeks afterward. Funny thing about that winter, although it stayed relatively cold, it never snowed again where I lived. The storm was one of great memories of my senior year of high school.
bigbog
Active member
......
$.01
The closer one got to the coast...sure got rocked by everything...snow, wind=drifting!...high tides.. Over in NYS's east side of Hudson valley(NE of Albany/Troy) we were on the drier side of the Green Mtns & Berkshires... I think we only got a "dusting" from the system as a little bit of it came up northward before hitting the Berkshires...the rest went eastward and hugged the coast. Man how I wish I was into alpine then....talk about snow...maybe not this particular system, but on the whole...and "backcountry style" country....(sigh...;-))
$.01
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Everyone knows someone here. If you last name is Nickerson, Sears, Hinckley, Homer etc... Or the old, I worked at the Improper in the summer of 98, remember >>>>
Hopefully the Blizzard will come back this year. We NEED it.
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