The Blizzard of ‘03
People began fleeing Boskone on Sunday around 3 p.m. The snow didn’t start here until Monday morning, and it stopped Monday night. In that brief time, we managed to break all previous snow records, including the Blizzard of ‘78:
National Weather Service Taunton MA
715 AM EST Tue Feb 18 2003
Record 24 hour snowfall and record snowstorm snowfall set at
Boston
As of 7 AM Logan airport in east Boston had measured 27.5 inches of
snowfall. This eclipsed the previous 24 hour snowfall record of 25.4
inches set during the April fools day blizzard of March 31St and
April 1St of 1997.
The total of 27.5 inches also set the record for greatest snowstorm
snowfall total. The previous record was 27.1 inches set February 6th
and 7th 1978.
I haven’t heard whether the winds were high enough to qualify as a blizzard here in Boston, but I understand it passed the bar elsewhere.
It didn’t look like that much snow when I headed out to work this morning. The T was running fine (note past tense), cutting a lovely green figure through the snow - not that my co-workers made much use of it. I found two people who’d been camping out in the office since Sunday, and three others made brief appearances. I wish they’d email me to tell me when a snow day has been declared. I could have used the sleep.
So, about that past tense… Apparently sometime between my departure this morning and my return home, the overhead power lines for the Green Line trolleys succumbed to the excessive snow. We were all tossed off the Green Line at Star Market and put on buses for the rest of the T route. Bussing on the Green Line usually makes the commute faster - even today with the streets looking no cleaner at 8pm than they had at 10am - so no one complained.