http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeastern_United_States_blizzard_of_1978

"The Northeastern United States blizzard of 1978 was a catastrophic and historic nor'easter that brought blizzard conditions to the New England region of the United States, New Jersey and the New York metropolitan area. The "Blizzard of '78" formed on February 5, 1978 and broke up on February 7, 1978. Snowfall occurred primarily between Monday morning, February 6 and the evening of Tuesday, February 7. Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts were particularly hard hit by this storm.

Boston received a record 27.1 inches (69 cm) of snow; Providence, Rhode Island, also broke a record, with 27.6 inches (70 cm) of snow[3] ; Atlantic City broke an all-time storm accumulation with 20.1 inches (51 cm). Nearly all economic activity was disrupted in the worst-hit areas. The storm killed approximately 100 people in the Northeast and injured around 4,500. The storm also caused over US$520 million (US$1.85 billion in present terms) in damage.

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I was a senior in college, was stranded there (slept in the chem building lounge for a week) then walked 12 miles home when I had enough!

from a cruise ship in the Western Caribbean. Of course, it was only like 45-50 degrees even there...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_blizzard_of_1996

"The Blizzard of 1996 was a severe nor'easter that paralyzed the U.S. East Coast with up to 4 feet (1.2 m) of wind-driven snow from January 6 to January 8, 1996. It was followed by another storm on January 12th, then unusually warm weather and torrential rain which caused rapid melting and river flooding."

If I remember correctly, schools around here were closed for at least another week after Christmas break.

We had missed so much school that year that they actually cancelled midterms. I don't think they've done that before or since.

I was in 10th grade.

I had left my 20+ year government job, was newly working for a law firm in downtown DC on a heavy-duty project, so I took bus downtown, and family waited and waited and waited for me to return nights; worked late, and bus took forever to get up 16th Street!

It was my freshman year in college. That year it started snowing in late October, and pretty much never let up until February. Right at the end of the Christmas holidays, when everyone was just back in school, we had an enormous several-day snowstorm, which dumped about 3 feet of snow on top of what was already there (about 2 feet already on the ground). It was also wet, heavy snow. Several of the roofs of campus buildings fell in, and they cancelled classes for an entire week. Those of us who lived on campus were trapped up there (the college is on top of a big mesa, only one road in and out) and had about 9 snow days with nothing to do but play in the snow together, etc. The drifts were several feet over my head, and they shoveled "tunnels" in-between the dorms and the dining hall. It was actually one of the best memories of my life - playing in the snow during the day and board games at night with all the other 18-19 year olds, living in this winter fairyland cut off from the reality of the outside world (this was also in the days before the internet). It was so awesome. So long as you have food, heat, and good companionship, I can heartily recommend becoming "trapped" by a big snowstorm at least once in a person's lifetime.

came back inside. A little bit later my son showed up at the door with 6 kids from his first grade class. The elementary school 1/2 block from my house decided the building was unsafe and just sent everyone who lived within walking distance home with some classmates! We had some cocoa and grilled cheese sandwiches and waited for parents to come and get their kids.

There have been several others but this is the one that came when I was a kid.

The snow drifted up to the roof of our neighbor's house, and we went sledding down it.

'96 (NJ), '09 (OK), '10 (NJ). I love snow, except in Oklahoma, where nobody knows what the hell they're doing. I was born a few months before the '78 blizzard. My mom broke her knee slipping on ice during the storm.

I had lived in South Florida most of my life until I moved here to the Atlanta area in 1989. I was so not prepared for a snow storm like that one.

The snow was 3 feet deep in places, and hundreds of thousands of trees fell everywhere, usually across a road or a power line. Never again, I hope!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_of_77

and Oct 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Storm_%22Aphid%22

I was a youngster. My father made an igloo in the front yard. School was cancelled. I had to make a path so my sheltie could get out of the house. The show looked a good 2 1/2 feet taller than her.. Lol.

Then I was back in the area stationed at Belvoir late 93 early 94. We had a major nasty ice storm, that left a good two inches of ice, then it snowed a good two feet over that. I remember the wind chill being in the -40 range with gusts. Those were the days.

It was major for us, I'm trying to keep road clear, its mostly ice, its Christmas eve and kids driving home from out of state. This was just the beginning...Might not have been the worst in total snow, but many horrible deaths on this Christmas eve people trying to travel.

ice storm of '98 sticks out the most for me, though.

http://www.kmov.com/news/slideshows/How-does-this-snow-storm-compare-to-1982-114299879.html?gallery=y&img=2&c=y#/news/slideshows/How-does-this-snow-storm-compare-to-1982-114299879.html?gallery=y&img=6&c=y

http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2012/01/31/big-snowfall-of-1982-was-30-years-ago/

blizzards were standard every year since the wind blows about 40mph all the time! We would have 10-15' drifts and since my "driveway" to my house on this ranch was almost 3 miles long believe me you didn't go anywhere for weeks at a time.

As far a big city blizzards snowstorms which they always mention those and kinda forget out folks in the barren northern states that have 2-3' fairly common.......my late husband was living in Chicago in their worst ever blizzard of 1967. He talked about it all the time. They say there was over 50,000 cars stuck in the streets, must have been a huge MESS!

In the heaviest snowfall since 1913, a mid-March blizzard in 2003 dropped 31.8 inches in Denver, making it one of the costliest storms to address, at a whopping $33.6 million, based on insurance claims.

My doggie girl LOVED this one, though. Five foot drifts in nearby Cheeseman Park and she became the burrowing canine "mole". LOL
http://blogs.denverpost.com/library/2012/02/02/a-list-of-colorados-historic-blizzards-and-snowstorms/

From a sheer inconvenience factor, I spent 72 hours at DIA (Denver airport) during the Halloween Blizzard of 1997. I had driven up from Ft. Collins to catch a flight to New Orleans, checked in. and within an hour of arrival they shut down the airport (Pena Blvd closed too). The irony is that I had snowshoes in the car, boots, a minus 20F- rated sleeping bag, and cross country skiing clothing and could easily have walked out to one of the hotels along Pena Blvd., but they wouldn't let me leave. Crews could not get in to staff the planes, nor to bring in supplies and no one was allowed to leave. Crying babies, no diapers, bathrooms in horrible shape, and until Red Cross came in, no food. So, 72 hours of misery in DIA later....


I've been in heavier snowstorms in Yellowstone and Western Colorado mountains during winter x-country (or downhill) ski trips that had us snowed in for more than a week, but these aren't really unexpected so I don't really count them

http://www.examiner.com/slideshow/denver-s-christmas-eve-blizzard-of-1982#slide=27345156

I was stuck at home for three days with no heat or electricity. I had a 1972 Ford Pinto (yep, you read right) and while everyone called into work for the next week, that damned bombucket made it through every day. Also, a friend of mine lived in Ft. Wayne, IN and had parked her Mustang in the farthest corner of the apartment's parking lot and didn't find her car until April.

although I have been in places that had blizzards just after I left.

I'm from the Mountain West where 2' of snow is a fairly normal occurrence, but Pittsburgh doesn't have the infrastructure or equipment to handle it. Started out with 2 feet of snow overnight and then we got a foot a week for the next 3 weeks. Five feet of snow total in the month of February, and virtually none of it melted until mid-March. The entire city came to a standstill for a week, and then it was all just a total mess for another month. We are in the heart of the city, as urban as it gets, and we didn't even see a snowplow on our street for 4 days, that's how strained the city was that week. I had friends who had unluckily parked on the street during the evening of the original snowfall, and literally could not retrieve their cars for 3-4 weeks. My house, which had never had water problems before, got ice damming during those 2010 snowstorms, and now has a permanent, unfixable leak in one corner of the living room. I read somewhere that just the cost of ice damming problems alone for that storm was in the multi-millions of dollars for Pittsburgh. Also, a number of people died that week because they had medical emergencies and ambulances could not reach their houses (Pittsburgh is a city built on narrow streets and steep hills).

I'm glad they're taking Nemo seriously - these kind of storms in old Northeastern cities can be extremely disruptive and dangerous. It's not like Aspen or Flagstaff or Tahoe where everything is built to deal with heavy snow all winter long.

Gov. Grasso shut the state down for three days.

and unable to walk up path from apartment to street, OR to crawl over ice to get there. Fortunately, I had shopped before! Pic on my cell-top is back yard with trees COVERED w snow, in case I forget!!!

'78 blizzard was major reason for me to leave Chicago and come back east; came to DC. I recall dirty snow on the street VERY late, not sure of the month, as I was leaving.



edit: Mad, just remembered: Wasn't there a big one around Jan. 22, 1986? or '87? Daughter's first or 2d birthday, made special dinner for us and my cousins, who couldn't make it from Kensington to NW?

Snow days!

I couldn't get anywhere for a couple of days except by cross-country skis. Also, January of 1982 - we got 17 inches in one storm and then another 20 inches a couple days later. I remember trying to get home from work, it took three hours to go 12 miles.

I was trapped at home for a couple of days and nearly went stir-crazy.

A late season snowstorm brought heavy snow to Iowa, southeastern Minnesota, northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. Wind gusts were up to 70 mph blowing the snow into snow drifts as high as 16 feet. Snow totals were commonly reported in the 10-20? range.

Dubuque: 19.2?
Waterloo: 9.7? (this pushed Waterloo to the top of the list of Snowiest Aprils)
Cedar Rapids: 14.5?
Belle Plaine 20.2?

The heavy snow and strong wind closed some highways in Iowa.

White out conditions. Travel was emergency only with heavy equipment convoy.

By the time it was over my pick up was almost completely buried.

I don't remember how deep the snow was, but I do remember that we had THREE days off from school.

We were living in what was then a far western suburb of Minneapolis, with nothing but countryside beyond us. A whole lot of snow--feet rather than inches-- fell, and like all good Minnesota children of that era, we turned on WCCO radio to hear the school closings. When they mentioned our town, we cheered and had a great day.

The next morning, our street still hadn't been plowed, and WCCO listed our district as closed for the second day...and the third. Then came the weekend.

In church on Sunday, we heard the reason. Our town officials had foolishly parked the municipal snowplows out in various open fields and they had gotten buried. It took a long time to figure out which huge drifts hid actual snowplows and which were just...huge drifts.

That was also the year of heavy flooding along the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers and the seven tornadoes that hit the Twin Cities in one night in May. Several buildings were destroyed within a couple of miles of us, and we experienced golf ball sized hail.

it was amazing!
i lived through that.
and a couple others that didn't strike me as so major as that one.

I remember that a storm came through and left about 22 inches of snow, one of the worst if not the worst storms in Wisconsin history. I tried to walk to school but visibility was zero and the wind and blinding snow with the wind chill factor produced a temperature of 38 below zero. I couldn't feel the violin I was carrying despite having gloves. I had to come back home. Back in those days in Wisconsin, schools never officially closed. I later found out only about five kids showed up in my 3rd grade class.

In Maryland, we were hit by not one, not two, but three 2 foot blizzards. And I had to shovel our long driveway in each one of them.

I like tell people that the winter of 1996 was what made up my mind in moving to Florida. In all honesty, I had actually made that decision long before that. But 1996 put an exclamation point on it.

As bad as the 1996 triple blizzards were, even worse was the 1994 ice storm. Out of power a week, and you could not even walk without risking your neck. We're talking about a four inch layer of solid ice everywhere, and tree branches falling around you left and right.

Seriously, though, it did freeze a lot of the orange trees that year all the way down to near Miami.

On Dec. 26th and 27th 1947 NYC was buried in 26.4 inches of snow. I was just a little kid but the snow piled up at the street crossings by the plows seemed to go up to the sky.

I remember that tunnels were dug through these piles to allow pedestrians to cross the street. The snow 'fort' that we built on our street lasted until Easter.

The first I remember is the Easter blizzard in the early 70s, as my brother was supposed to get baptized that day.

Then, I remember the infamous ice storm a few years later, as our home had no fireplace, so we went to my grandparent's home in the next town, as they did have one. I also remember my town at the time (Cromwell) being one of the only towns in the state that did not close school (I even remember the radio announcer saying that it would be easier to list the schools that were open...). The odd thing was, the superintendent of schools in Cromwell was orignally from Jamaica, but he was tougher about canceling school than anybody else in the region.

I don't really remember the blizzard of '78 so much

I do remember the blizzard of Feb 17, 2003 because I had started a new job that day and my daughter was born the next day. My boss had me fill out some paperwork that first day, and then sent me home.

I'm used to blizzards.

It's the ice storms that were really memorable, and of course the "Last Gasp" April storms.

I remember we had a blizzard the last week of December in 1976, and then on January 1rst the temperature dropped to below zero.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Blizzard_of_1978

New Year's 1999 - it went from the low 50's & rain to a flash freeze, and then 9 inches of snow on top of it, so everything was frozen solid. Highway 65 from CHI to INDY was closed for almost a week.

January 2007 - something like 13 inches of snow in less than 24 hours, started mid-afternoon & schools etc didn't think to close early, so kids were stuck on school busses, in traffic, for up to 8 hours.
The city was paralyzed. Thankfully I planned ahead & brought boots, heavy coat, etc to work. My employer was about 4 miles from home & there was a nature trail that I trekked home on, before the snow got too unmanageably deep. Walking was literally quicker than trying to drive.

the barometer had sunk to almost 28 inches.

FROM THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH:


"The night before, it had been 40 degrees, with a drizzling rain and thunder. At WBNS-TV (Channel 10), weatherman Joe Holbrook thought it odd that the barometer reading had sunk close to 28 inches. He might have even tapped it, thinking the needle was stuck. It didn't move."


http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2008/01/26/BLIZZARD.ART_ART_01-26-08_A1_J495SVR.html