Remembering the Blizzard of ’78

Tonight I was hanging out with my friend Patricio, and we went over to Micro Center to do some shopping and browsing.  Man, I love that store.  Anyway, the course of the conversation led to me talking about my grandparents’ farm in Somerset, and also led to me talking about the big blizzard of 1978.  That event is one that everyone around here remembers quite well.  My family here in Massachusetts certainly experienced it, especially my grandparents and other family members who lived in Somerset, which was in the area where it hit the hardest, down near the Rhode Island border.   I think my grandparents got about 30 inches of snow in less than 36 hours.

My grandparents lived quite close to the Somerset/Swansea border, and just up Route 6 in Swansea my friend Shell lived with her parents, and they got it even worse.  They got snowed in so badly that they couldn’t get out the front or back doors of their house.  The snow made it impossible to open.  So they had to go upstairs, open a window, and lower a fire escape ladder to get out of the house.  It took them a long time to clear the snow from the driveway to the front door.

My older relatives all talk about this storm and what a nightmare it was.  My grandfather got stuck in Providence and it took him all  night and into the next day to get back to Somerset.  He ending up spending the night in a fire station in eastern Rhode Island.  Thousands of people had to abandon their cars after they got buried.  The amount of snow that came down in such a short period of time was just shocking.   The photos have to be seen to believed, and most people from the South or other areas of the country without much snow will  never see anything like this in their lives.  More snow that many places will get all winter in less than two days.

-Geoff