N. OF PIKE Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 great clip vortex95 i didn't realize the winds were THAAAAT strong announcer asks harvey if we'll ever personally see a storm like that.; " no nearly impossible" 1 in a xyz year blizzard ? 100 years ....200 years.....300 ? 3 feet of snow and hurricane force winds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoastalWx Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 I am surprised Coastal Wx hasn't found this yet! Gov Dukakis is interviewed, and rather abruptly gets cut off at 7:09! Keep watching, an extended piece with Harvey Leonard comes next! I thought that was in here somewhere. I like that video. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baroclinic Zone Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Boston probably got about 33" from what I've gathered on known snow depth data and pictures. Its possible they got 34-35" too...but I'd probably settle on 32-33" but then again I'm always a bit conservative and a stickler when it comes to snow totals. But I think I would be really confident saying they got 31"+ in that storm as a minimum for modern day measuring standards. Lends credence to what the SE MA area received. 42"+. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoastalWx Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Boston probably got about 33" from what I've gathered on known snow depth data and pictures. Its possible they got 34-35" too...but I'd probably settle on 32-33" but then again I'm always a bit conservative and a stickler when it comes to snow totals. But I think I would be really confident saying they got 31"+ in that storm as a minimum for modern day measuring standards. I saw pics from my Grandparents in Roslindale which is a neighborhood on the sw side of the city and I agree. It looked like 30-34" OTG of new snow based on the pics I saw of family members walking around on the street, nevermind the back yard.Probably was even a bit more. I always thought the 27" was too low. Likewise, I don't think Lincoln RI got 55". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CT Rain Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 There is a min in the CT River valley in the '78 storm in the Kocin book...the Berks didn't do a whole lot better though...maybe 3-5" better. 12-17" vs 18-22" (and even two Berk coops reported less than that, so 18-22 might be generous)...the big snows were east. Though Norfolk, CT did report 24"...but that was south where better snow was. The CT River in MA and N/C CT will generally get downsloped in big nor easters...you normally have to get south to like New Haven and northern suburbs to relieve that phenomenon. CT River valley in MA usually needs some big mesoscale banding that overcomes the downslope effect to get near jackpot...ala Feb 5, 2001. It's funny how you have a fetish for downsloping in Hartford in big events yet it rarely happens. Springfield is an entirely different story. But I honestly don't think downsloping in HFD or Middletown is anywhere near as big of a deal as you and some others make it out to be lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CT Rain Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 I saw pics from my Grandparents in Roslindale which is a neighborhood on the sw side of the city and I agree. It looked like 30-34" OTG of new snow based on the pics I saw of family members walking around on the street, nevermind the back yard.Probably was even a bit more. I always thought the 27" was too low. Likewise, I don't think Lincoln RI got 55". Yeah a lot of the totals seem on the low side compared to what they'd be by modern (6 hour) measurements. No doubt the drifting made things difficult to measure. Many areas already have 6"+ OTG before the storm making the storm and piles look even more impressive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoastalWx Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Yeah a lot of the totals seem on the low side compared to what they'd be by modern (6 hour) measurements. No doubt the drifting made things difficult to measure. Many areas already have 6"+ OTG before the storm making the storm and piles look even more impressive. I'd say they had close to 3' from what I saw. My grandmother still lives there, and knowing the layout of the property...to see the snow depth and drifts in those pics was extremely impressive. It was almost hard to fathom how that was possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baroclinic Zone Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 There was 4-5' OTG at my parents house in Foxboro. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoarfrostHubb Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Not sure who made this map Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoarfrostHubb Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 There was 4-5' OTG at my parents house in Foxboro. Agree with what I remember. Def 40"+, would not be surprised at 48" When I compare it to what I saw (and measured) 4/1/97, where I had 36", it was waaaayyyyy more Some might be due to drifting, but it drifted everywhere. You had those great pics I think last year Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoastalWx Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 There was 4-5' OTG at my parents house in Foxboro. I think as the low occluded, there was a weenie band that rolled in from BOS harbor and points sw into interior se mass and ri. Part mid level frontogenesis, but also part CF/OES perhaps. And yeah, I wouldn't even doubt mt grandparents had more. I'm being conservative with 3', but I think there was some still OTG before the storm happened, in shady areas. I saw a 55" report in Lincoln RI, but I think that's too high for that storm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoarfrostHubb Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 I think as the low occluded, there was a weenie band that rolled in from BOS harbor and points sw into interior se mass and ri. Part mid level frontogenesis, but also part CF/OES perhaps. And yeah, I wouldn't even doubt mt grandparents had more. I'm being conservative with 3', but I think there was some still OTG before the storm happened, in shady areas. I saw a 55" report in Lincoln RI, but I think that's too high for that storm. Agreed, but there were several reports of 48" by DPW folks, not trained observers. I think Walpole, MA reported 48" Messenger usually chimes in about something Todd Gross did on it that got lost when he left.... It was stunning how much more of an impact it had than 4/1/97 or Dec 1992, at least in SE MA and RI The ocean damage was incredible, as you know I would much rather discuss this than model confusion or the Patriots Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baroclinic Zone Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 I think as the low occluded, there was a weenie band that rolled in from BOS harbor and points sw into interior se mass and ri. Part mid level frontogenesis, but also part CF/OES perhaps. And yeah, I wouldn't even doubt mt grandparents had more. I'm being conservative with 3', but I think there was some still OTG before the storm happened, in shady areas. I saw a 55" report in Lincoln RI, but I think that's too high for that storm. Agreed on the 55" total but I do thing there were a lot of us that got 42"+ (Woonsocket had 38" officially) just from that storm in an arc from that Lincoln, RI area up to Foxboro and over towards Brockton. This storm coupled with the prior system of ~18" imby, 4-5' otg is not hard to believe. Dave, I did post pictures either here or at Eastern from what my dad found. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baroclinic Zone Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Here is the BOX paper on it. http://www.erh.noaa.gov/box/papers/blizzard78_30yrs/Bliz78NWS_files/frame.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoastalWx Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Agreed on the 55" total but I do thing there were a lot of us that got 42"+ (Woonsocket had 38" officially) just from that storm in an arc from that Lincoln, RI area up to Foxboro and over towards Brockton. This storm coupled with the prior system of ~18" imby, 4-5' otg is not hard to believe. Dave, I did post pictures either here or at Eastern from what my dad found. I agree with that. My folks lived in Brockton..in the house where I grew up and from what they told me...it seemed like they had close to 38-40" at least.They did say it got wet for a time too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoarfrostHubb Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Agreed on the 55" total but I do thing there were a lot of us that got 42"+ (Woonsocket had 38" officially) just from that storm in an arc from that Lincoln, RI area up to Foxboro and over towards Brockton. This storm coupled with the prior system of ~18" imby, 4-5' otg is not hard to believe. Dave, I did post pictures either here or at Eastern from what my dad found. Most (but not all) of the Jan snow had melted. I think we had 4 or 5" still around. I def recall there still being some snow on the ground because we were at recess at the Lewis School (where the roof collapsed) sliding down the hill there on some bulletproof stuff when the first flakes started to fall. they sent everyone home a few minutes later. I did not go back to school for 3 weeks or so until they got the Igo building set up for us Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baroclinic Zone Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Most (but not all) of the Jan snow had melted. I think we had 4 or 5" still around. I def recall there still being some snow on the ground because we were at recess at the Lewis School (where the roof collapsed) sliding down the hill there on some bulletproof stuff when the first flakes started to fall. they sent everyone home a few minutes later. I did not go back to school for 3 weeks or so until they got the Igo building set up for us I do recall in later years the talk of the school roof collapse. Keep in mind I was 3-1/2 when the storm occurred so all the memories I have are vague and through my older sisters and parents. My boss remembers jumping off 2 stories buildings in Dedham. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donsutherland1 Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 The Blizzard of '78 is still one of my all-time favorites. The prolonged snowfall, extensive drifting, and frequently low visibility made it memorable. For those who are interested, three pages of photos from the blizzard can be viewed at: http://wintercenter.homestead.com/photo1978.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoastalWx Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 My mother has a pretty cool story from that storm. She was teaching in Newton at the time. They let everyone out shortly after the snow started since it went straight to S+. She got on 128, just when the sh*t hit the fan. It was right when the 18 wheelers started slipping and jackknifing going up the hill in Canton, right after the I-95 interchange heading towards Blue Hill. She was right before the Rt 1 exit on 128 heading south. Everything was a parking lot she said and nobody was moving. When my parents built and moved into their house, my neighbor told her that anytime she got into trouble with traffic on 128, she should get off at Rt 1 and head south to rt 27 and take 27 south towards Brockton. My mom got off 128, and headed south on Rt 1, but did not know where to take a left. She ended up taking a left somewhere near Walpole, but had no idea if it was the correct road. She said she remembers driving down this road and everything was a white out. She could not see anything, signs were blotted out, and she didn't know where the road ended or of there was a cliff or drop off on the edge of the road. She just kept going down this road. About an hour later, she pulled over and knocked on someone's house..not knowing where the hell she was. The guy opened the door and looked at her like" what the eff are you doing out." She said she was lost and scared and had no idea where she was. The guy told her she was in Easton. Some how, she made it to the point where she only had a few more miles to go..lol. He told her how to get to rt 123, and from that point on she was ok. Of course no cell phones at the time meant that my Dad was completely crapping his pants wondering where she was. She asked to use the guy's phone to call home. She made it home, about 6 hrs later and barely made it down our street which wasn't plowed yet. The scariest part was the driving, she said. Having no clue if she was about to drive off the side of the road, since she had no idea where the road was about to turn left or right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CT Rain Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 I'd say they had close to 3' from what I saw. My grandmother still lives there, and knowing the layout of the property...to see the snow depth and drifts in those pics was extremely impressive. It was almost hard to fathom how that was possible. Yeah, it's incredible. It's amazing what hours and hours of 50-70mph gusts will do... even in locations away from the beaches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CT Rain Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 I think as the low occluded, there was a weenie band that rolled in from BOS harbor and points sw into interior se mass and ri. Part mid level frontogenesis, but also part CF/OES perhaps. And yeah, I wouldn't even doubt mt grandparents had more. I'm being conservative with 3', but I think there was some still OTG before the storm happened, in shady areas. I saw a 55" report in Lincoln RI, but I think that's too high for that storm. Yeah it seems that the places that really cashed in were the ones who got into the weenie band on 2/7... while many other areas had the hellacious thump with 60+ mph winds during the afternoon/evening of 2/6. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weathafella Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 The Blizzard of '78 is still one of my all-time favorites. The prolonged snowfall, extensive drifting, and frequently low visibility made it memorable. For those who are interested, three pages of photos from the blizzard can be viewed at: http://wintercenter..../photo1978.html Nice Don..thanks for sharing. I will go to my grave with the failure to experience the blizzard of 78 being one of the great disappointments of my life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amarshall Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 We have a house on the second row behind the ocean in Marshfield. The waves were so violent they took bowling ball size rocks and threw them through the house in front of us. It blew open the back of the house. In a panic, our neighbors opened the front door as almost a release valve. That way when the waves filled up the living room with water, the water would flow through the house and out the front door. My old man got stuck on 128. He was commuting from Waltham to Hingham at the time. He got picked up by the DPW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ginx snewx Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 The severe T storm that lasted 1.5 hours with constant thunder and winds near 90 absolute whiteout at 2 am was perhaps the most intense part of the storm for me. The lamp post on my parents sidewalk 15 feet from the house was not visible. The winds were so loud at times it drowned out in the house conversation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hambone Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 I've written about it a few times over the years, but as far as I know, I was the last person to get off of Rte 128 in Dedham. I worked in Waltham, lived in West Bridgewater. My boss didn't let us out till 3PM on Monday. I was driving an MGB in those days and it took me over 3 hours to get from Moody St to the rest area before the train station on 128 south. A guy I worked with who lived in Brockton was driving a Nissan pickup loaded with rug cleaning equipment (his side job). Once we got to the rest stop came to a complete stop and we sat in the same spot for over an hour. The radio was telling us that 128 had been closed and the State Police were beginning to evacuate people from their cars. I went back to Bob and told him I was going to give it one last try and asked if he wanted to get in the MG with me. He declined, but said he would follow me in his truck. I pulled into the breakdown lane and onto the shoulder and started to gun the MG. I always kept a couple hundred pounds of sand in the trunk during the winter and had good rubber and surprisingly I got traction and started to "porpoise" through the heavy snow. After a few hundred yards of this I came upon a bunch of jacknifed tractor trailers that had the entire road and breakdown lane blocked. Without losing momentum I went into a "power slide" on the sloped shoulder and somehow managed to get by the bottle neck with the back of my car half in the ditch and my front tires pointed parallel to the road. The adrenaline rush was amazing. Once past the trucks the road was pitch black and I was able to get back up on the pavement. 128 takes a big sweeping uphill turn to the east there and I kept pedal to the metal until I reached the top of the hill. Looking back there were no lights behind me and no lights in front of me. It took me another 2 hours to pick my was down 128 to 24 to the Westgate exit in Brockton. I knew it was Westgate because there was a glow to the east of the highway. I had to park under the overpass and get out to find the exit. Somehow I got off the highway and onto the exit ramp, and it had been blown clean by the winds. I got up on 27 and fell in behind a state p[low that headed down to Main street. From there I made my way to West Bridgewater and was just barely able to ge the MG into the head of my parents driveway and off the street. I'm leaving out a lot of details, but you get the gist of the ride. It was amazing what I went through and how much luck was involved. Total drive time was 6:30. My co-worker called me days later to say his truck got stuck when he tried to follow me down off the shoulder at the jacknife and he was evacuated by the State Police hours later and spent 5 days, with 100 of his closest friends, living in the Morse Shoe Factory in Canton. Work was cancelled for a week, but the liquor store near my parent's house stayed open for 5 straight days....plenty of beer and a week to hang out with friends walking around the closed city of Boston. The area had better than 42" on flat ground and drifts that were 30-40 feet off the back of houses. Our house was at the end of a golf course and the amount of snow that blew into the yard was unbelievable. It took the National Guard with huge earth moving equipment to blow through the drifts across the road from the golf course. It took me two full days to shovel out the driveway (I was a 24 year old). I emailed this story to Matt Noyes at NECN on the 30th anniversary of the storm. He read it on air and sent me an autographed copy of a book about historic New England Storms. That ought to be good for some weenie points ehh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoarfrostHubb Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 I love the stories. Scooter's mom and Hambone's are great Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mayjawintastawm Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Yeah a lot of the totals seem on the low side compared to what they'd be by modern (6 hour) measurements. No doubt the drifting made things difficult to measure. Many areas already have 6"+ OTG before the storm making the storm and piles look even more impressive. Right, a lot of people don't remember that about two weeks earlier we had close to 20" in E MA... I remember Don Kent (my hero) calling it "Superstorm '78"... we didn't know we hadn't seen nothin' yet. My parents, taking the only vacation they ever had without us kids, were stuck in Bermuda till Sunday. We still have the scrap of paper from the MA State Police authorizing them to drive home from Logan, along with a summary of the very few routes from the airport that were open on which they were allowed to drive! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoastalWx Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Good story Hambone. I remember you talked about that storm several months ago. I think I know the golf course you talk about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CT Rain Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Right, a lot of people don't remember that about two weeks earlier we had close to 20" in E MA... I remember Don Kent (my hero) calling it "Superstorm '78"... we didn't know we hadn't seen nothin' yet. My parents, taking the only vacation they ever had without us kids, were stuck in Bermuda till Sunday. We still have the scrap of paper from the MA State Police authorizing them to drive home from Logan, along with a summary of the very few routes from the airport that were open on which they were allowed to drive! Yeah between the piles already massive after the storm and 50-70 mph wind you were able to develop monstrous drifts and piles. On Long Island you saw how some of those drifts looked when there was "only" a solid 2 feet of accumulation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ginx snewx Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 On the south coast we had zero snow left from the Jan storm, we had a torch rainstorm in between storms. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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