Blizzard of '78: The Aftermath

When the storm eventually passed, and Wednesday rose bright and sunny, this was the scene everywhere. Here a couple of intrepid souls have gone out and cleared the snow off their cars, but to what avail?

Traffic was banned in greater Boston. The crews cleared major streets so emergency vehicles could get around and trucks could supply grocery stores and pharmacies. People were traveling around Cambridge on cross-country skis, as dump truck after dump truck carried loads of snow down to dump in the ocean.

You couldn't plow the snow; you had to remove it. Mid-morning a large front-loader appeared on our street (we were a major route to the hospital, so we had priority). People came out to watch, The operator would drive forward to fill his scoop, then point to a pile of snow and ask bystanders if there was a car under there - if they said no, he'd dump his scoop, spilling snow over sidewalks and into yards. When he had cleared the street, we were left with our vehicles under 2-3' of snow, with nowhere to put it, and sidewalks blocked by up to 4-5' of snow. The snow was too deep for a snowblower; it took me 3 days to shovel out our driveway and yard.

Out on the highways, I've no idea how they cleared them. I'd propose clearing large industrial and municipal parking lots, working along loading the snow into trucks and freeing vehicles. Then tow the vehicles to the parking lots, logging the license plates. When traffic was allowed once more, have people call a central number to find out where their vehicles were?

It was only 27" of snow in Boston, but with the drifting, it was much more in certain areas. It was the Boston record for a 2-day snowfall until another storm beat it by 1/2" 25 years later, and is still second.

But the snow wasn't the only problem.