Ten years ago this very week (January 26, 2015), after a quiet and innocuous start to winter, we were hit with a storm that ushered in a series of storm after storm. I was outside shoveling the driveway every other day. Six inches of snow one day, more two days later, and the pattern kept on until we accumulated 110 inches of snow. We had so much snow that we had nowhere left to put it. By the time April arrived, we pretty much just sat around and cried. Our biceps were toned and muscular, but we cried, just the same.
Forty-seven years ago this week was the Blizzard of '78. We all know you young'uns are tired of hearing about it, like it was some catastrophic milestone of a storm . . . because . . . it was. It snowed anywhere from one to four inches of snow an hour for just over two days straight. It snowed sideways. It snowed through winds over eighty miles per hour. It snowed through thunder-snow. (Yes, I was outside for that, and, unlike Jim Cantore, I did not muchly enjoy the experience.) The ocean rose fifteen feet along the coast. More than seventy people in Massachusetts died. It snowed so suddenly and freakishly that highways shut down, thousands of vehicles were abandoned, and strangers wandered from house to house begging for mercy. Another 39,000 sought out shelters. Transportation was cancelled, and we were in an emergency shut-down for at least a week.
We know what's out there.
The longer it stays calm and quiet, the more we hold our breath and wring our hands and overstock with milk, bread, eggs, and toilet paper. We know it's going to happen. After all, last winter lulled us into complacency, and that can only lead to disaster. When it does, because it will, do not ask, even in song, "Do you want to build a snowman?" Well, don't ask that until May. It has only snowed a few times out here in May. We can tolerate it by then.
