You Kids Don’t Know How Easy You Have It

Published February 7, 2011

If you think this winter is tough, WBUR’s David Boeri says snap out of it.

Boeri dug up these old copies of the Herald and the Globe, from 1969 and 1978, when two of the worst storms in history pummeled the area. “I was living in Alaska (as a commercial fisherman),” Boeri tells me, “and my parents were thrilled to be showing me just how bad it was in Massachusetts.”

Until the Blizzard of ’78, a four-day storm in February 1969 was the worst on record. As you can see on the Globe front page below (see full size), a storm in February 1716, before modern record-keeping began, supposedly dumped 10 to 15 feet on Boston in five days.