'Snowicane' pain -- A look back at Boston's worst blizzards

The 19th century featured the Great Snowstorm of 1831, which gave the Cape almost 3 feet, The Triple Storms of December, 1839 - which left 3 1/2 feet in the Berkshires and dismasted or destroyed nearly 300 ships and killed over 150 along the Massachusetts Coast - and the Blizzard of '88, a three-day behemoth, that dumped upwards of 50" in some southern and western New England locations. The Portland Gale of 1898 took 400 lives, eliminated Provincetown as a major fishing port, sank a side-wheeling passenger steamer on an ill-advised voyage ('The Portland') and changed the course of the North River in Humarock.

In the 20th and 21st centuries ,we had the 100-hour storm of late February, 1969 (over 26 inches of snow in Boston), the April Fool's Day Blizzard of 1997 (25 1/2 inches), the Feb. 17, 2003 pounding (27 1/2 inches), and the wallop of Jan. 22, 2005 (22 1/2 inches). A telling statistic is that the storm of February 1969 was the first storm measured in Boston over 20 inches since the National Weather Service began keeping records during the Civil War. Since 1969, accounting for measured snowfalls in communities within the Route 128 belt and not just Boston proper, we've had 10 storms that have eclipsed 20 inches.

Q. What other storms in New England stand out? Didn't a ferocious one hit in 1717?

Boston's pious preacher Cotton Mather, whose account of the storm was read before the Royal Society of London and was included in one of the first publications made by the Massachusetts Historical Society, said: "The Indians (his term) near a hundred years old affirm that their fathers never told them of anything that equaled it," indicating that it was the fiercest storm ever encountered by Anglo-Saxon settlers in New England, including the Pilgrims and coastal explorations by John Smith and the like.

Four successive snows fell from Feb. 27-March 17, 1717 leaving 4 feet in Andover and 3 feet in "the woods of Dorchester" (I love that). 100 sheep were buried in a 16-foot snow drift for 28 days. When they were dug out, two were found to still be alive as they subsisted on the wool of their deceased ovine brothers and sisters.

Q. Before the advent of modern snow-clearing equipment, how would local cities and towns dig out, if at all?

A. The Three Big Snows of December 1786 inundated Boston with driving snows and floods (due to an exceptional high tide). This storm was the first in which the city of Boston paid public servants to shovel ("level") the streets. In Colonial Massachusetts towns, each homestead was responsible for snow removal and merchants had personal monetary incentives to make themselves available for commerce.

Some snowdrifts would force occupants to exit their homes through second-story windows. Like you and I still do today, they just waited it out -- and then they dug out. The other night, when I was trying to zamboni the slush off my driveway in the pouring rain, I harkened back to that time when snow removal was much easier and one would not get soaked from head-to-toe from a 7-foot tsunami that was launched from a puddle by a speeding snowplow.

Q. As a longtime weather watcher, do you believe New Englanders have become wimpier in dealing with blizzards in an era of Doppler Radar and fleece layers?

A. We are tougher than most give us credit for. We know how to celebrate the seasons and we have learned how to endure the weather. When the governor or the mayor says stay home, we stay home. Boston has accurate meteorologists, tireless utility, and public works crews, vital store and shop operation personnel, public safety officers and officials. They don't get the snow day off that we get. They work long shifts and recover the cities and towns efficiently and seamlessly.

Sometimes we take that for granted, but we never take the weather for granted. Our forefathers began experiencing, understanding and surviving the New England weather almost 400 years ago, and today, maybe it is an atavistic trait that just runs through our ancestry and genealogy and emerges time and time again when at 6:17 every evening some Dad in a New England household says "SSSHHHUSH. The weather's on".

John Horrigan is a New England folklorist who specializes in researching historical weather, great fires, mysteries, shipwrecks, and the Revolutionary War. He is a project manager for a medical device company and a re-enactor with the Lincoln Minutemen.