This place would be wild right now if we had this haha. I always wondered how the modern day mesos would perform in this.
The forecast I remember was for 6 to 12 inches even in the Boston area. With that in mind, the decision was made after school to stay at my grandmother’s in Hyde Park because we knew they heavy wet snow would be too much for her to handle. And I figured they would be no school. It really wasn’t supposed to change to snow until around midnight if I recall correctly. I went to high school in Taunton at the time and we just moved to Marshfield earlier in March 1997. It was last period, when I looked out the window and the rain changed to heavy wet sleet and snow. I couldn’t believe it. This wasn’t supposed to happen until midnight. I didn’t know if this was kind of fluky thing, because I was old enough to understand that sometimes when precip came down heavier, it “brought down the cold air” as we were told. I left the school shortly after 3p and it was still heavy wet sleet and snow mix. Driving up route 24, this changed to all snow shortly after I got north of Bridgewater. By the time I hit Brockton, it was just absolutely pounding heavy wet snow to the point where I had to pull over because it was just caking on my wipers and the visibility was below a quarter mile. It was like this all the way I got to Hyde Park. By time I got to my grandmothers it was about 4p with already probably 3 inches or more on the ground roads were snow-covered and there’s already tree damage LOL. By the time dusk came, it became a wind blowing snow and it just started stacking and stacking. I do remember talking to my folks and it was still sleet mixed in Marshfield even at dinner time. It changed shortly after.
By about 9p there was TSSN and probably close to a foot already. We lost power around that time. There was OCNL LTG through midnight when I finally passed out. I woke up around 5am and it was chaos still. Someone who attempted to plow the road got stuck and left their Jeep there. Even at mid morning it was still coming down heavy. I went to shovel after and I couldn’t believe how much snow fell. It was well over 30”. I had no yard stick so I gauged it with a piece of strapping about 4’ long haha.
They finally plowed us out the next day with a front end loader. I’m pretty sure that area just SW of the city was a local max. I was at 200’ in elevation on the SW side of the city in the firehose. Still to this day it’s my biggest storm.