Did they say how they did during Matthew? I ask because there was a nor’easter that blew down for 3 straight days before the hurricane was even off the coast. All of downtown and Riverside were under water. I live 3 blocks from the beach in South Jax Beach and we flooded badly, too. Thank God I didn’t live right on the beach.
There's one weather event that many here didn't experience, but it was and still is the mother of all weather events. The blizzard of '78. It was the perfect storm of perfect storms.
One of my first memories is of the family that moved in across the street from us just before the storm hit. They were a couple with two very young children and had come from San Diego. They were there for less than six months before they had to move to Dallas. Their timing was horrible.
I had to try and work in it and I have so many incredible memories that I wish the smart phone had been invented so I could share them.
I remember sitting in a truck in the Beachmont section of Revere MA watching waves crash over the sea wall sending water flowing down the street in front of us. There was a small driveway carved out of the side of a hill with two cars that backed out of the driveway in unison as if being driven. They both backed out, turned heading away from the coast and went down the street out of sight.
We then got stuck as we tried to get into Winthrop from Short Beach and when help arrived they snapped a chain trying to get us out and didn't want to get stuck themselves, so they left. As we sat there wondering what to do, a woman offered us shelter in a home across the street and we got some sleep in the living room while her and her two daughters slept in their rooms. I doubt that would happen in this day and age.
We had one engineer who lived a few cities over from the office and used snow shoes to walk to work. His reward a few years later was to be dumped in a cost cutting move.
When I finally got a chance to return home a couple of days later, after sleeping in the plant and trying to get more work done, I drove up my dead-end street at 3AM and saw that it was one car wide and there was a 10 foot high bank of snow left by the plows and I had to clear that to get into my driveway. I started to cry. That was when I heard the sound of my neighbors bulldozer and saw it heading my way. Ten minutes later I was in my bed. God bless you Roger and RIP.
Once the snow stopped it was back to work time but there was a ban on driving. The main street that our street was off of was like a mall with hundreds of people walking along. My wife and I had just bought a ****er Spaniel puppy and he was a hit with all of the people we saw on our walks.
Luckily, I was considered a vital worker and could drive the short ride to work, but I was stopped by the police constantly and had to explain why I had some of the office workers with me.
I'm sorry about the length of this post, but all this talk of weather brought me back to that incredible time in my life. It was surreal.
