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31 years ago today, the NE Blizzard of 1978 struck.

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flvegan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 12:20 PM
Original message
31 years ago today, the NE Blizzard of 1978 struck.
Anyone living in New England at the time likely remembers. We lived right on the water and it was days before we had power or our streets got plowed. Our next door neighbor lost a storm wall that had cost them (at that time) in the tens of thousands to put up to stop cliff erosion.

I remember being a very scared 6 year old.
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BeachBaby Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 12:25 PM
Response to Original message
1. I remember that.
It clipped NJ pretty hard. Hurricane winds and about two feet of snow in record time. Lost power for a day, IIRC.

How much snow did you get in Mass?
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flvegan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 12:31 PM
Response to Reply #1
7. As my mom recalls it, we got five feet of snow over two days.
Any time the wind would die down, we'd all be out shoveling our walk and porch. Our great dane slept on my bed every night anyway, so I had no problems staying warm when I slept.

We lived right on the water down towards the Cape, so I think we got hit the hardest.
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bluedeminredstate Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 12:27 PM
Response to Original message
2. I lived in Rye, NH
We lived about a mile from the beach where route 1A flooded and houses fell into the water.

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Gormy Cuss Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 12:29 PM
Response to Original message
3. I was stuck in Maine unable to go anywhere south because the Boston area was closed.
Maine wasn't hit hard by the storm and our roads were clear and passable by the next day. However, we couldn't GO anywhere. The interstates were closed all around Eastern Mass and the Portland airport only had flights connecting out of Logan.

When I-95 and I-90 reopened it was still a mess.
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Jamastiene Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 12:30 PM
Response to Original message
4. I was a kid too.
I only saw pictures of it on TV though. I lived in a brick house back then.
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surrealAmerican Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 12:30 PM
Response to Original message
5. I remember this storm.
I was an eighth grader living on Long Island. We were out of power for about a week, and it was very cold. The only heat we had was from running the oven. First few days, we spent a lot of time in the kitchen. When the tiles started popping off the kitchen floor (the house was contracting, the tiles weren't), we stayed at my grandmother's apartment in Brooklyn (she was in Florida at the time).
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trof Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 12:31 PM
Response to Original message
6. We had just moved to Merrimack, NH a few months before.
My first blizzard.
whew
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TZ Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 12:50 PM
Response to Original message
8. I remember that.
lots of snow drifts. For the only time in my entire life the door to our backyard was literally snowed shut (that was probably about a 12 ft drift). Our dog who ran away if you let him out without a leash was playing in the yard cause he couldn't go anywhere. We made a pit in the snow for him.
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OPERATIONMINDCRIME Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 12:54 PM
Response to Original message
9. We Were Stuck On The Verrazano Bridge For 14 Hours I Think.
I was quite young at the time, but I remember that it seemed to go on forever.
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NewJeffCT Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 12:57 PM
Response to Original message
10. I don't think we had it bad where we were - the ice storm was worse
we lived about 12 miles south of Hartford at the time. I'm sure school was canceled and all, but I do not remember any big hardships.

I remember going to live with my grandparents for several days after the infamous ice storm a few years before that - we lived there because they had a fireplace and we did not. The schools in my hometown of Cromwell were 1 of 3 in the whole state that were open, but since we could not make it back to Cromwell, we did not go (oddly, the school superintendent was from Jamaica - you would have thought he would cancel at the first flakes) I still remember the radio announcer (Bob Steele?) saying that he was not going to read a list of cancellations - just saying that Cromwell, and two towns down near the shore had school, everybody else was postponed.



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MineralMan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 01:01 PM
Response to Original message
11. What's really scary is how many DUers there are
who weren't even born in 1978.
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Blue_Tires Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 02:57 PM
Response to Original message
12. I used to live in RI and people still regularly talked about it
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lukasahero Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 03:29 PM
Response to Original message
13. That was my husband's first year living in Boston
He had come up from Virginia and thought winters up here were always like that. Which begs the question - why in God's name did he stay?!?!?

I was 15 and remember shoveling snow that was deeper than I was tall... :wow:
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FedUpWithIt All Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 03:35 PM
Response to Original message
14. I remember that winter.
Edited on Fri Feb-06-09 03:40 PM by FedUpWithIt All
I have a memory of my mother walking through a milder blizzard pulling my 3 yr old brother and myself in a sled. She needed to get essentials from the corner store and my father had disappeared with the car. She was 23 and 6 months pregnant.

I vaguely remember the bigger series of blizzards. I was also 6.

:hi:

edited to add: Something i did not know...The lowest atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the United States, apart from a tropical system, occurred as the storm passed over Cleveland, Ohio. Cool.
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DS1 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 03:35 PM
Response to Original message
15. Nothing a flamethrower and a handful of Shamwows couldn't fix
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LeftyMom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Feb-06-09 03:43 PM
Response to Original message
16. Wow, you are old.
;)
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