32 years ago

[fbhjr]

I sat in my office at work today as everyone talked about the big storm that was on the way and I couldn’t help thinking of 1978.
I remember my father getting trapped at work for almost a week. His place of work is just about half way on my 12 mile commute home now. Good thing for him it was the power company and had a 24/7 command center with food and places to sleep.
I was in high school and got 2 weeks off due to the storm. The snow drifts around our house were taller then I was. I had trouble using the snow blower on the driveway because the snow was deeper then the snow blower was tall. I remember leaving the blower running in the middle of the drive way and shoveling snow into it to be thrown off to the side yard. It was 4 days before they even tried to plow the road we lived on. Before that we had used our sleds to walk to the store and get more food.
It was more then a week before they removed the state of emergency and let non-emergency vehicles use the roads again.
I remember how clean the air smelled after two weeks with almost no cars on the roads.
We’re only supposed to get 4-8” today. Down in the mid-atlantic they’re getting what we got 32 years ago. I’m just as glad I’m up here in New England, not down there in the snow belt.

But, when I came out of my office after 6 hours of snow in what was forecast as a blizzard…

No so much.

Comments

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

yeah they always compare to the '78 storm to any big storm nowadays :P

I too am glad to not be in D.C. right now, not only is it way more snow than they anticipated, but they just don't know how to deal with it.

Not to say we've done much better as far as I'm concerned, but, we're seasoned enough to know to have a shovel and such.

Although, in my "prep" for snow in the morning, I left my scraper-brush at the bottom of the stairs and totally forgot about it when going out to the car this morning (as there was no snow until 10AM)

Although it snowed all day at my workplace, it was barely sticking, so going to the car at the end of the day my wipers were more than able to wisk away what wet snow was on my windshield. I noticed as I got closer to home (ie: "up hill") the snow had accumulated to about an inch if that. So I am relieved it is not as bad as places south right now.

[brickhousewench.livejournal.com]

I was living in KY during the blizzard of '78. A "major storm" in KY is an inch, and we got 15 inches. We were having shortages of natural gas, so they cancelled school "until further notice" which ended up being a solid month. That was the only winter we had enough snow to build a snow fort. (Usually if you wanted to build a snowman you had to roll the ball all over the entire lawn to get enough snow for a mini-man.) We build a fort at my best friend's house and an igloo at our house. And a six foot tall snow woman. Dad shoveled half the block, because, well, they don't have a whole lotta snow plows in KY.

Good times.