(Bloomberg) — So far this winter, Boston has received 77.3
inches of snow, most of it in the past two weeks.
Since records have been kept, well back into the 19th
century, Boston has never had much more snow on the ground.
Once, Ice Age glaciers covered eastern Massachusetts and my
teachers told me they were a mile thick, so it could be worse.
In my lifetime, I’m not sure it has been.
As a lifelong resident of the area, snow and storms mark
milestones in my memory, which can sometimes be tricky.
“People do have a tendency to remember storms as bigger
than they were,” Matt Kelsch, a hydrometeorological instructor
at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in
Boulder, Colorado, told me recently. Part of that is because
when you were smaller, the snow seemed deeper.
Still, here are a few that lodged in my mind.
In 1970, it snowed on Easter, which just didn’t seem right
even to a kid looking for an extra day off from school. In May
1977, I was set to start my first varsity lacrosse game because
the senior goalie was hurt. It snowed about 5 inches, the game
was called off and he got better. A chance for glory passed.
Probably no one else alive even remembers that part.
Bad Winters
The entire winter of 1993-1994 seemed pretty gruesome for
its longevity and amount of snow, with 96.3 inches, until
1995-1996 came along. We got 107.6 inches, the most for a
winter. The record still holds, though we’re just about 30
inches short now.
The storm that stands out most for me is the one that
defined my generation — the Blizzard of 1978, which was made
worse because it came on the heels of a storm about two weeks
earlier. A page of my high school yearbook is dedicated to it.
Every year, it seems, there is some retrospective.
So much snow fell in such a short time the state closed.
More than 5,400 cars were stranded around Boston and Providence,
according to a weather service report. They stayed stuck until
heavy equipment dug each of them out. At least 99 people died in
New England, the weather service said.
Storm’s Destruction
The storm pounded the shoreline. The cabin that naturalist
Henry Beston wrote about in his book “The Outermost House” was
swept into the Atlantic. Across the region, 2,000 homes were
wrecked.
The current series of storms hasn’t come close to that.
As a 16-year-old high school senior in Needham,
Massachusetts, in 1978, I was safe, dry and warm. The blizzard
was an adventure. Travel was banned, so people walked
everywhere, pulling sleds loaded with groceries and supplies.
School closed for most of February. I had a snowblower. So
I had the time, the youth and the means to make some cash.
My friend from the football team, Sean, joined me and we
set out into the streets. Our first stop was my neighbor, Warren
Thorpe, a World War I veteran that I did chores for because he
admitted he was just getting too old.
The snow was so deep it overwhelmed the snowblower. We had
to use shovels to knock down the snowbanks and fed the chunks
into its mouth like we were stoking the boilers on the Titanic.
It took all day to clear the driveway.
Mr. Thorpe would put on his brimmed hat and coat and come
out and watch us work until his wife shouted from the window,
“Come in, you old fool, before you catch pneumonia.”
Snowy Reflections
He wasn’t there to supervise; he wanted to throw off his
coat and help us. In that driveway, under a brilliant clear sky,
I realized at 16 that life is short and youth is fleeting.
I think about that every time I reach for a shovel or start
a snowblower. Like all New Englanders, I grumble about having to
dig out; it is the cliche thing to do.
My secret truth, though, is — I like it. I don’t ask the
kids to help. I don’t want anyone to join me. I insist no one
has to worry about the driveway.
I looked into the eyes of a man who wanted to work and
couldn’t, and that has haunted me ever since.
So let it snow. As long as no one dies and no one loses the
house, it doesn’t really matter. We’ll have memories, something
more to talk about than 1978, and if we reach that record we’ll
get a new milestone to mark our lives. In the spring, we may
even have floods and an extra helping of mosquitoes born in
thousands of vernal pools when it all melts. Yearbooks will have
pages dedicated to the big winter of 2015.
Until then, I’ll be outside, maybe off in the woods or
maybe just in the driveway. I’ll be thinking of Mr. Thorpe and
all the days gone by.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at
bsullivan10@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
David Marino at
dmarino4@bloomberg.net
Charlotte Porter