Larry and Nicole in vulnerable, coastal Scituate MA had this comment:
"They're comparing this one to 1978."
I responded:
No.
Absolutely not.
Go away.
I survived 1978. Luckily, my apartment never lost power: I had heat, I had an oven, I had hot water, I could listen to music.
But ... here's the diff ... the wind behind the blizzard of 1978, as I recall, was reasonable, not reckless; though the snow mounted up, for sure. It would take a week for the streets to start moving again in Providence.
That 1978 day, I was driving a used (used up) Saab, coming back from an elementary school where I was a "writer in residence for 1st and 2nd graders" (yes, I complained, but they can't actually write, can they?) ... and as I left that school in North Kingstown the snow was floating down in mere light, charming, countable flakes ... and by the time I reached the Providence city limits, about a half-hour later, the highways were beginning to seize up. I ended up peeing in a jar, as I made my way inch by inch.
This was, though, the one obstacle a Saab was well engineered to overcome. It might otherwise be a complex machine that no one in RI knew how to fix ... but it could defeat heavy snowfall. I vividly recall steering around an abandoned city bus, its doors flung open, a few blocks from my residence.
But I reached safety. I reached my apartment and settled in to see what would happen.
It was Apocalypse S-Now.
Trains stopped running. Stranded commuters abandoned countless cars on the Interstates; just vehicle roofs were still visible from overpasses (I went to see). Heavy machinery and the national guard were brought in as soon as possible to clear the highways.
Eventually spring arrived ... and a few years later, the dumped snow from the 1978 blizzard finally melted.