At four AM the night sparkles. The full moon is low enough to cast reflective glitter on the inch of eerie blue snow in my yard. Snow is frozen (crystallized) water vapor. Yes, it’s a gas turned right into a solid – fallen from the sky. A “blizzard” is defined as a severe snowstorm with winds of 35 mph for more than 3 hours, with visibility less than a quarter mile. Connecticut history tells us the BIG ONE was either the snowfall of 1717, when 50+ inches fell over nine days, or the famous 1888 Nor’easter, which produced almost 60 inches, caused 400 deaths, and sank 200 ships. The Atwood House, our Joshua’s Trust office, was built about 1840, just as the Little Ice Age was winding down. Clearly, that climate reboot didn’t stop historic snowfalls from occurring in Connecticut. Rudy Favretti once heard Isabelle Atwood tell about childhood sledding from the Atwood farm all the way down Mt. Hope Road (over a mile) with her sister Harriett, then walking back up to the farm (over a mile) pulling their sleds.
Long-time Trust member and ex-President Hill Bullard recalls eastern Connecticut weather as colder from the 1940s to the 1960s than it is now. For him, the notable one was in1948, when snowplows couldn’t open even the main roads for three days, and they ate out of their freezer and skied to the Post Office for the mail. Hill relates that until the ‘60s, Connecticut ice fishermen could consistently drive onto ponds on a foot or more of ice. Sometimes, if snow had not yet fallen, the ice was a deep black glass window through which one could see to the bottom of a lake.
Wayne Norman of WILI says the epic February Blizzard of 1978 was the winner in his lifetime (Wayne asserts that contrary to popular opinion, he wasn’t here in 1888). “But I have pix.” In that 1978 tempest, I too remember having to cross-country ski Rt. 32 to Allie John’s Package Store for a six-pack. The snow came on the heels of a January storm that caused the Hartford Civic Center roof to collapse, and probably goes down as one of our nastiest winters since the 19th century.
Remember ice? Ice is frozen liquid water. Sleet is snow that has melted and refrozen during its downward journey. And freezing rain is simply rain that doesn’t freeze until it hits the colder ground. Historically, the BIG ONE here might have been February 22, 1898, when it was said the ice was up to 7 inches thick. Even taking that report with a large grain of salt, it’s scary.
One of my sharp memories is the awesome ice storm of December 16, 1973. Snow changed to freezing rain and fell relentlessly for 24 hours. The next day it looked like Venus around here, with an inch of ice on everything (that’s accurate and is what makes the 1898 estimate so alarming). It brought down thousands of power lines and trees and shut off electricity for a third of Connecticut’s population. Endless tinkling, clinking, shattering, and crashing sounds went on and on. Cars parked outside, including their door locks, were impenetrable. Good thing there was nowhere to go anyway.
Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Ctr. University of Connecticut Library.
When I look out again it’s dawn, the western sky is pale pink and pewter, and the wind is picking up. Uh-oh. This century has already produced the Halloween Nor’easter of 2011 and the February 2013 Blizzard, with hurricane winds and up to 40” of whirling white stuff. The climate has changed, but everyday weather has not. It’s still beautiful sometimes, and terrifying other times. Winter is far from done in 2021.
© George Jacobi
I was living in a small trailer on Chaffeville Rd. In the storm of 1978 and worked in Meriden at the time. The state let us out right in the middle of the storm and it took me 3 hours just to get to Willimantic!. Then I had to shovel off my roof and did the same for an elderly neighbor. Good thing I was young back then!
Virginia Adams
My wife and I attended UConn and were supplementing our income by doing weekend babysitting. I left campus in our VW bug and passed several cars stuck off to the side of the road. I had to make it to Windham Center where we were ‘sitting’ a local doctor’s children. When I got to the driveway there were several feet of snow on the ground. I used the front bumper as a plow and after several attempts was able to get the car half way into the drive, but still partly in the road. To top it off the harrowing weekend experience the house we were staying in seemed to be haunted. There was a vey old painting above the fireplace that looked like Al Hirt. His eyes appeared to follow you around the room. We ended up flipping the painting around. All told though it was a magical storm.