New England snowstorm memories.

[The 4 Seasons]

46 years ago today. 

 

[The 4 Seasons]

Just finished this for our site May '77

[The 4 Seasons]

@Sey-Mour Snow

 

[TalcottWx]

What is.. Snow? 

[dendrite]

Never a good sign when this is bumped in late December 

[OceanStWx]

39 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Never a good sign when this is bumped in late December 

[The 4 Seasons]

11 hours ago, OceanStWx said:

kill me

[HIPPYVALLEY]

Although I lived in Cambridge for Feb 78 and April 1st 1997, I still think my favorite was the 2 day January 2005 storm.  Just epic in the Cambridge/Somerville area.  I walked around Inman Square burying a yard stick in multiple locations.  It snowed for at least 30 hours.  We couldn't see the roofs of many cars with the drifting. 

[FRWEATHA]

For societal impacts ‘78 was like nothing else. I was 11 y.o. at the time. Had an afternoon paper route after school. Still remember delivering papers in a raging blizzard and loving it! Had an uncle that lived with my family that got stuck carpooling from Cranston in Providence that was rescued by National Guard and spent a week at Ri Hospital.

[SouthCoastMA]

Bump

Only the 20 year anniversary of the Cape's biggest snowstorm in recorded history. Not too shabby in other parts of Eastern MA/RI either. 

 

[DavisStraight]

1 hour ago, SouthCoastMA said:

Bump

Only the 20 year anniversary of the Cape's biggest snowstorm in recorded history. Not too shabby in other parts of Eastern MA/RI either. 

 

Looking at that radar I don't think I did that great but I don't remember the details.

[ORH_wxman]

2 hours ago, DavisStraight said:

Looking at that radar I don't think I did that great but I don't remember the details.

You were near the dryslot cutoff. ORH had 2 feet but not too far south had dryslotting that made it more like 14-17”. 

[ORH_wxman]

The ‘05 blizzard was exhilarating on the models though…it kept coming north every single run it seemed like and got bigger and bigger too. It was one of those storms that trends better and better right up to go-time. I remember @wdrag had an amazing AFD the day before I believe talking about how the ETA model was now closing off H5 which was going to help capture the sfc a bit more and bring higher snow totals. 
 

Some of METARS out of FMH were epic in that storm. You also know the storm was impressive with the airmass when ACK flips over to rain for a time but still grabs 24”. 

[CoastalWx]

17 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

The ‘05 blizzard was exhilarating on the models though…it kept coming north every single run it seemed like and got bigger and bigger too. It was one of those storms that trends better and better right up to go-time. I remember @wdrag had an amazing AFD the day before I believe talking about how the ETA model was now closing off H5 which was going to help capture the sfc a bit more and bring higher snow totals. 
 

Some of METARS out of FMH were epic in that storm. You also know the storm was impressive with the airmass when ACK flips over to rain for a time but still grabs 24”. 

I think maybe the outer Cape got to near 32...but it was a ridiculous airmass. I think I got to upper 20s with raging NE winds and then it slowly fell after midnight as we started to advect colder air at like 925. CF went through early morning and it plummeted to like 9F in that deformation band. Some of the worst conditions I've experienced. 

[ScituateWX]

32 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

I think maybe the outer Cape got to near 32...but it was a ridiculous airmass. I think I got to upper 20s with raging NE winds and then it slowly fell after midnight as we started to advect colder air at like 925. CF went through early morning and it plummeted to like 9F in that deformation band. Some of the worst conditions I've experienced. 

One of the best weather memories I have!  I was a senior in High School and it started on my birthday!  I remember we had a track meet in Boston at the Reggie Lewis Center and the ride home was wild I give that bus driver all the credit in the world driving from Boston to Scituate as conditions went down Hill fast.  The next morning all of the houses down on the shore were caked in ice quite a sight.  I remember it all like it was yesterday wow 20 years now!

[CoastalWx]

42 minutes ago, ScituateWX said:

One of the best weather memories I have!  I was a senior in High School and it started on my birthday!  I remember we had a track meet in Boston at the Reggie Lewis Center and the ride home was wild I give that bus driver all the credit in the world driving from Boston to Scituate as conditions went down Hill fast.  The next morning all of the houses down on the shore were caked in ice quite a sight.  I remember it all like it was yesterday wow 20 years now!

And then I went and saw what happened on the Cape and got jealous lol. I won't forget how much snow they had. It literally was their '78.

[OceanStWx]

18 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

The ‘05 blizzard was exhilarating on the models though…it kept coming north every single run it seemed like and got bigger and bigger too. It was one of those storms that trends better and better right up to go-time. I remember @wdrag had an amazing AFD the day before I believe talking about how the ETA model was now closing off H5 which was going to help capture the sfc a bit more and bring higher snow totals. 
 

Some of METARS out of FMH were epic in that storm. You also know the storm was impressive with the airmass when ACK flips over to rain for a time but still grabs 24”. 

Just go back and read a few of those AFDs. Classic stuff. 

Thank god. Daryl is archiving all of that stuff so that you can grab an AFD from 20 years ago.

[DavisStraight]

1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

And then I went and saw what happened on the Cape and got jealous lol. I won't forget how much snow they had. It literally was their '78.

James often opined about that storm, one of his favorites.

[SouthCoastMA]

Plymouth had over 3ft according to reports, but the Cape was solidly in the low 30 to mid 30's. VERY hard to measure though. I was in Wareham at the time and measured a depth between 26-30", but nearly impossible to get an accurate measurement with all the drifting. 

[ORH_wxman]

4 minutes ago, SouthCoastMA said:

Plymouth had over 3ft according to reports, but the Cape was solidly in the low 30 to mid 30's. VERY hard to measure though. I was in Wareham at the time and measured a depth between 26-30", but nearly impossible to get an accurate measurement with all the drifting. 

Based on my grandparents house in Yarmouth and my memory of talking with Phil (capecodweather.net), we think they had about 33-36" in Yarmouth on the mid-Cape. But yeah, measuring perfectly accurately was nearly impossible because the winds were just incredible. A lot of houses had drifts right up to the roof....it wasn't just in isolated weenie spots....it was widespread 10-12 foot drifting.

 

A lot of people forget this, but like 3 days later, there was another Cape-centric storm that dumped a solid 7-12" on top of the blizzard snows....we had like 4-6" back here, but I remember thinking that was bad timing for them considering they hadn't finished digging out of the blizzard. The pics after the 1/26/05 storm were crazy.

[ORH_wxman]

We were also pretty sure as far east as the mid-Cape had over 100" of snow that winter....there's no real good coops east of E Wareham, but we figured the snow totals were fairly uniform (not necessarily in each storm, but in the aggregate since some storms like 12/26/04 favored further east) between the Warehamd coop and mid-Cape. I think Wareham coop had something like 105" which is crazy insane for them...and considering they probably lost a few inches due to coop measuring. They are good there, but not totally pristine.

 

Just an incredible winter there.

[CoastalWx]

That second storm a few days later...that actually was a widespread event that turned into a CJ, especially near the canal. It was just after that when I went down. Insanity.

[ORH_wxman]

5 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

That second storm a few days later...that actually was a widespread event that turned into a CJ, especially near the canal. It was just after that when I went down. Insanity.

Yeah mid-Cape had about 8-9” but I think some weenie spots near the canal had a foot. The pack after that one was into historic levels down there. There’s probably a few spots that had 60”+ that month for totals and the pack was over 40”. 

[dendrite]

3 hours ago, OceanStWx said:

Just go back and read a few of those AFDs. Classic stuff. 

Thank god. Daryl is archiving all of that stuff so that you can grab an AFD from 20 years ago.

I had fun one night last winter looking back on old AFDs and other text products from the 80s and 90s on the ISU site.

[H2Otown_WX]

On 1/22/2025 at 3:56 PM, SouthCoastMA said:

Bump

Only the 20 year anniversary of the Cape's biggest snowstorm in recorded history. Not too shabby in other parts of Eastern MA/RI either. 

 

The good old days of the NWS mosaic radar

[CoastalWx]

2 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

Yeah mid-Cape had about 8-9” but I think some weenie spots near the canal had a foot. The pack after that one was into historic levels down there. There’s probably a few spots that had 60”+ that month for totals and the pack was over 40”. 

They had that storm at the end of Feb too that pissed me off. Like 2/25. We did ok with about 6” or so,  but they got another foot in that iirc.

[ORH_wxman]

1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

They had that storm at the end of Feb too that pissed me off. Like 2/25. We did ok with about 6” or so,  but they got another foot in that iirc.

2/28-3/1 I think you mean? That was the “convective blob” storm. We were supposed to get like 8-12” over the interior but we busted a bit low (maybe had about 6” like you) because of that massive blob. It looked like an MCS. 
 

We were tracking it on WWBB at the time and messenger in PYM started reporting freaking silver dollars falling from the sky…they were getting 5” per hour. We weren’t sure if it would be all snow down there because the column was marginal…but it went isothermal. I think he got a total of 16” in about 5 hours. It was crazy…I remember him posting a pic in the middle of it and seeing nothing but silver dollars and the street light about 100 yards away was like a dim light in fog. 
 

[CoastalWx]

44 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

2/28-3/1 I think you mean? That was the “convective blob” storm. We were supposed to get like 8-12” over the interior but we busted a bit low (maybe had about 6” like you) because of that massive blob. It looked like an MCS. 
 

We were tracking it on WWBB at the time and messenger in PYM started reporting freaking silver dollars falling from the sky…they were getting 5” per hour. We weren’t sure if it would be all snow down there because the column was marginal…but it went isothermal. I think he got a total of 16” in about 5 hours. It was crazy…I remember him posting a pic in the middle of it and seeing nothing but silver dollars and the street light about 100 yards away was like a dim light in fog. 
 

Oh yeah we did well in that. I had like a foot in that. 
 

This was on 2/25. It nailed the Cape.

[SouthCoastMA]

5 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

We were also pretty sure as far east as the mid-Cape had over 100" of snow that winter....there's no real good coops east of E Wareham, but we figured the snow totals were fairly uniform (not necessarily in each storm, but in the aggregate since some storms like 12/26/04 favored further east) between the Warehamd coop and mid-Cape. I think Wareham coop had something like 105" which is crazy insane for them...and considering they probably lost a few inches due to coop measuring. They are good there, but not totally pristine.

 

Just an incredible winter there.

Is that station now defunct? I could've sworn I got my 113" total from that coop years ago but I can't find it any longer. Theres another one close, but it only has data going back to 2021

[H2Otown_WX]

1 hour ago, ORH_wxman said:

2/28-3/1 I think you mean? That was the “convective blob” storm. We were supposed to get like 8-12” over the interior but we busted a bit low (maybe had about 6” like you) because of that massive blob. It looked like an MCS. 
 

We were tracking it on WWBB at the time and messenger in PYM started reporting freaking silver dollars falling from the sky…they were getting 5” per hour. We weren’t sure if it would be all snow down there because the column was marginal…but it went isothermal. I think he got a total of 16” in about 5 hours. It was crazy…I remember him posting a pic in the middle of it and seeing nothing but silver dollars and the street light about 100 yards away was like a dim light in fog. 
 

Didn't March have a bunch of nice events that year? I gotta find my weenie snow journal from when I was a kid.