Today marks the 31st Anniversary of the Blizzard of '78. How many of you were old enough to remember this? I was 10 years old and I had a blast! Of course I lived in the city and my familiy didnt have to dig out of anything! I remember the streets after the storm had huge "mountain" like piles of snow on each side of the major streets! Me and my friends actually dug up a street light! The best was not having school for about 3 weeks!!

Yeah I remember the Blizzard! Well, at least as well as a kid who was 8-years-old at the time could be expected to remember it. It's also hard to forget when the news stations mention the anniversary every year. Last year was the big one--the 30th anniversary. That was a media blitz (or blizzard as it were ).

Of course my memories are kind of like yours Joehead. Being a kid, I knew that something really big was going on, but it was hard to appreciate how serious of a thing it was for most people. For me it mostly meant no school and a LOT of snow to play in. It would be very different for me know as a working adult.

I do have two serious memories from the blizzard though. There was a kid in the grade below me (I dind't know him at all, but he was a classmate of my nephew) disappeared a couple of days after the blizzard. It seemed like the entire town was out searching for him and no one could figure out wher he was. I remember seeing people walking in a line in the woods near our house with long sticks, putting the sticks into the snow as they walked along searching for the kid. I walked over to my father's buried car and uncovered the windows, half expecting to see a dead kid in the back seat. Of course that was mostly my CDF-addled brain using its imagination, but still, it does show that the seriousness of the situation had hit me.
A week or so later (not sure exactly how long it took) a mailman saw some cloth near the front door of the kid's house. When he checked it out he found the kid's body buried under the snow. Turns out that he had dies RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIS HOUSE when snow or ice had fallen off the roof. There was just SO much snow around that no one realized he had died so close to home. People were searching all over town, and he was in front of his house the whole time. It must have been such a tragic shock to his parents.

The second story also involved my nephew. I don't really know all the details about this one, but apparently a couple of kids got lost or stuck out in the woods sometime after the blizzard. My nephew's dog Jasper actually came upon them and stayed with them overnight. When the kids were found the dog was credited with probably saving their lives. While this is a great story, it was kind of an unhappy one for my nephew. His parents agreed to give Jasper to the kids because of what he had done for them. Of course he was just being a "good dog", but it really was a pretty heroic thing to do.

Wow, what a tragic story Col. Manning! I dont what I would do if we got a storm of the maginitude today! I dont live in the city anymore, and I complain about shoveling 2 inches these days!

One nice memory I have is, after a week had gone buy and we were able to go out and about, my father took me to see Close Encounters and whenever I see that movie I think back to that time.

yeah that is a sad story

that storm was surreal. we dug tunnels under the snow and played in them. probably very stupid thing to do in hindsight.

i used to have pictures of the snow drifts some of which were almost as tall as our house! crazy. i hope we never see a storm like that again.

I remember the 7 foot snow drift that blocked our back door completely. Could only use the front door until we shoveled ourselves out which took the better part of a week. I remember there were no cars on the road except for emergency vehicles and snowmobiles. Everyone walked. I remember getting emergency milk in plastic bags, and being able to walk over the chain link fence in the back yard. There were still huge piles of snow at the Lincoln Mall in mid-May.

It was probably a once in a lifetime experience, but I'm so glad I was young enough to enjoy it.

Now that it's almost summertime, I see this thread!

I was in the 4th grade during the Blizzard of '78...I remember we had to walk to school (Quincy/Wollaston) and get schoolwork to bring home and complete. I remember climbing over snowbanks to get there. Good times!