This is the other side of the peninsula my parents live on in Winthrop MA (in the photo below).
My parents had over two feet of water running down the street. Normally they'd get flooded as all the water would make its way underground into the basement. Somehow - and this is rare - they didn't get any water. The snowplows had built up several feet of snow on the sidewalk and kept the water flowing down the street.
Never seen this happen before - really escaped this one. Myabe the ground being frozen helped too - I just never seen snow prevent the ocean from coming in. Albeit they are on the inner harbor side - much calmer but the water from the Atlantic fills up the harbor and the waves roll over the seawall.
As for this Blizzard ? At least from what I see - it's not even close to the Great Blizzard. The winds were no where near the gusts measured at Logan Airport and the tides were 'tame'. Tame I say ? Because post '78 there was portions of the street and seawall gone - up to the houses - from the waves carving deep into the ground (note the seawall and street intact in the photo).
haha - I was 7 in '78. I thought it was the coolest thing ever watching the waves roll over the seawall - up until the waves started crashing against the house and my parents nervously whisked me away thinking the sunporch would be torn off. Winthrop has one of those emergency WWII vehicles/boats (the duck tours). It sank. They came around with a frontend loader to rescue residents trapped on the shoreline - many folks didn't leave including my family - as they were not taking pets. huh ? Sorry dog or cat - hope you can swim. I don't know what they were thinking had it turned out worse than it did.
My parents have a nice fireplace - they rarely used it and never burned wood - since the flu was said to need relining (unknown word to my parents) - so '78 saw no heat for us as the oil furnace succumbed to 6 feet of water.
This 2013 blizzard - they were happily burning the wood stove insert I installed - and when the power went out they were merrily burning staying warm.
Some of my friends and colleagues have had no power since Friday. They look at me strangely when I ask if they have a wood stove or such.
This 2013 storm looks like it hit Connecticut with the most amount of snowfall.
Luckily for us - or me anyways in MA - this snow was light and easy to move albeit lots of it. If this were heavier snow this would have been much more catastrophic.
