By Stefan Yablonski
My, how the mighty have fallen. Winters around here just aren’t the winters I grew up with.
It’s gone full circle. I have lived through our snowiest winter on record — in fact all of the top 10 winters.
And I have witnessed the top two least snowiest (last winter’s 38.7 inches and the previous winter’s 47.0 inches). Also, on the lowest list recently are: 2019-2020, 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 — the winter of 2015-2016 was just outside the top 10.
In the old days, the snowbanks along the roads near my house were so big the plows had to wing them back — basically creating a two-tiered snowbank.
I have vague memories of the blizzard of 1958. It was very quiet and the snow was over my head. However, 1966 is the storm I remember in vivid detail — heavy snow and howling wind for days. And it spoiled my birthday party! On the positive side, we did have plenty of food to get us through the storm; enough spaghetti with meatballs, cakes, ice cream and more … enough to feed an army of kids (who were unable to attend).
In Oswego there was a snowdrift 20 feet tall at the corner of West First and Bridge streets, up the side of Shapiro’s clothing store. At my house, in Mexico, the snow blew from the river, over the field, across the road, across the lawn and piled up to the second floor windows.
When the storm abated, we waded through the snow to go uptown for supplies. The snowdrifts had obscured the bridge over the river. We stayed in what we thought was the middle of the road and by the grace of God made it across the bridge — instead falling through the snow into the Salmon River.
We got an estimated 103 inches of snow in five days. Snow totals for the storm vary — mostly due to intense winds blowing it all over and the methods that various “observers” used to take measurements.
However, due to the lack of snowfall the rest of the winter months — the winter of 1965-66 wound up with just 148”.