As I just told john. It was when you had a week or more of constant
snow. Technically it was separate storms but it just looked like it
was just one big event. That was when the place was gridlocked for
over a week. If they have not cleared off all the old snow and new
snow falls, Who cares?
Unfortunately I still had to work.
It was still rare enough that they did not have the equipment to deal
with it. You saw construction equipment out there clearing snow.
Big rubber tire loaders seem to work the best but we did see 6 wheel
graders and all of the salt trucks had plows on them.
I certainly don't want a repeat of what we had up here, especially in
February. First "major" storm was just about now in January and then
one a week for the next 5 weeks. Total was about 5' as measured in my
backyard.
I remember the blizzard of '78. I had just left active duty and was in
the reserves. That was a two day storm that dumped an incredible amount
of snow very quickly. Mike Dukakis was governor and he shut the state
down for a week. It was illegal to drive anywhere unless you were
driving an emergency vehicle. A large state plow truck became stuck in
front of our house. Snow was just too high and heavy for it to move.
They had to come in with a huge Caterpillar bulldozer to rescue the
truck and continue plowing the street.
All military reserves were called up. I was picked up in a big military
4x4 truck. Somehow we made it the 20 miles or so to the South Weymouth
Naval Airstation. When I got there it turned out there was really
nothing for us to do so I ended up as a spotter in a Navy helicopter
flying along the coast from NH to the Cape looking for
anyone who needed to be rescued. We were flying along a coastal road
and saw a large van ... like a FedEx or UPS truck ... that only had
about a foot of the roof line showing. The pilot hovered over it to
take some pictures and we realized it wasn't snow that had covered it.
It was sand, dumped along the coastal roadway by the wave action created
by the storm.
I really only remember 3 times when we really got socked like that. It
just would not stop snowing. It still totaled about 2 feet over a week
or so and the place was pretty much shut down. I sold my Jeep during
one of those events. I got to the guy's house on top of a big hill in
Wheaton and he said "sold" from his front porch before he even got to
the car. We drove down to a bank on the plowed road (New Hampshire
Ave), he paid me and I waited in a bar for my wife to come get me.
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