Blizzard Stories 1996

So the temperature dropped to -14 degrees in my hometown last night so I thought I would get back to talking about something I really hate – the weather. Thus a blizzard story for your enjoyment and my consternation.

I have two stories about blizzards I have been a part of. One in 1996 in New England, the other, the famous 1969 blizzard in NYC. This post is about 1996.

In January 1996, our kids were 10 and 6 years old. We had purchased a snow blower so the daunting task of clearing a 100 foot driveway was not as much an issue. Little did we know what we had in store for us. The first blizzard began on Saturday January 6th 1996 and continued until Monday morning, almost 48 hours of storm We received about 27 inches of snow and spend a good part of Sunday afternoon and then again Monday morning snow blowing the driveway and clearing the steps to the house. The kids were excited and we spent time at the local hills sledding and enjoying the New England winter but then things took a turn for the worst.

Mrsfabp had offered to babysit for several of our friends children on the following Friday and a small storm was predicted. They brought PJ’s and sleeping bags and we figured we would hunker down for the day and evening. The storm however had a mind of its own and as the wind intensified; our TV stations warned that the storm was getting much stronger than anticipated.

Around 8 pm on Friday night, at the height of the storm, with intense winds, we saw flashes in the sky to out north and we lost power. Later we were to find out that the whole power grid for Massachusetts was down due to heavy snow, broken tree branches and severed wires from the storm. So let me sum this up – we are without power (no water, stove or heat either), trapped in a house with 6 kids. Needless to say we were stressed to the max.

We had a wood stove so we kept it fired up and used the top for some basic cooking – eggs, pancakes, grilled cheese, cans of soup and plenty of coffee and hot cocoa. We melted snow to make the codffee and cocoa. No lights meant we all settled down to cold rooms by about 6 pm. No water meant no showers or baths, melting snow to flush toilets and wash and heat water for coffee or tea. We learned that day to fill our tub in blizzard warnings so as to have some conveniences. We also learned it took an hour to melt all the snow in a bucket to flush the toilets.

At one point in that first evening, one of the darling children knocked over a candle and it burned a hole in our couch. A nice house fire would have really added to the ambiance of the winter storm, don’t you think?

We were without power for a total of six days and knew several people who went longer. The kids stayed for a couple of days until the roads were more passable and I’m not sure who was happier when they got to go, them or us. We moved most of the food from the refrigerator to a cooler kept on the back porch, more worried things would freeze than melt.

And we survived, at least this time.