It’s official. The amount of snowfall in the blizzard of February 17th, 2003 eclipsed the amount dumped by the infamous Blizzard of ’78. The previous record was 27.1″ of snow dumped on Boston in 24 hours, and yesterday’s storm dumped 27.5″ of snow in the same time period. This time around, city and state officials were much more prepared, with several days advance warning. In addition, the snow was light and fluffy, not wet and cementlike as was the snow in ’78.

With all of the heavy snowfalls this season, road crews are finally back up to the level of preparedness that they were before the snow-drought of the last several years. Yesterday when I was driving to work, I saw a row of six backhoes standing at the ready in the Northshore Mall’s parking lot. This morning, as I was exiting 128-South onto the Forest St. bridge, I saw a line of eight plows all lined up and ready to go should they be needed.

It took a little extra time to get the car dug out this morning. Snow was about knee-deep, and it came all the way up past the bottom of my car door! I had to clear away some of the snow first before I could even get the door open. After I fetched the shovel and dug out around the car, I had the challenge of getting out of the parking space. Since there was a mixture of snow, slush, and ice under the tires, I had to do a little back and forth rocking action. Eventually the car rocked back and out of its space, and all was well. 🙂