Glimpse of Yesteryear
At the time of this writing, the newspapers are full of stories of the noreaster that hit the East Coast. Hundreds of…
At the time of this writing, the newspapers are full of stories of the noreaster that hit the East Coast. Hundreds of thousands were without power for days. As much as 30 inches of snow closed roads and stranded people in their cars. We are told that more than a third of the states snow-removal equipment was sent to the New York City area alone, including more than 400 plows and 10 snowblowers.
But what about when Geauga was young? They had snowstorms back then. What did people do?
Well, looking a bit further back to what is called The Great Snow of 1717 gives us an idea. The Great Snow was really a series of four storms that came in quick succession from late February through early March of 1717. The East Coast was involved, but heavy snow was recorded as far west as Philadelphia. It is recorded that as much as 5 feet of snow was on the ground in Boston before the worst of the Great Snow began. Before the storms ended, there was an additional 3 to 4 more feet with high winds that made for drifts up to 27 feet high, drifts that buried entire houses or forced people to exit their homes by second floor windows.
Why, you may ask, did they allow the snow to accumulate like that? It took almost three weeks to get that bad. Why not use the snow plows?
Ah, theres the rub. At a time when one could travel only by horseback or on foot, when no method of snow removal beyond a shovel and a strong back was available and when many small communities struggled in ordinary winter conditions, there wasn’t really anything that could be done about the roads – except to wait for warmer weather to melt the snow. People were simply trapped in their homes for days while they waited for that warmer weather.
So it was in the East Coast in 1717 and so it was in Geauga in the late 1700s through the early 1800s.
Nowadays we speak of Alberta Clippers. (A fast moving low pressure area which generally affects the central provinces of Canada and parts of the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes regions of the United States that takes its name from Alberta, Canada, the province from which they appear to descend, and from clipper ships of the 19th century, one of the fastest ships of that time.) And we talk about Lake Effect Snow, which results from cold, arctic air traveling over a relatively warm body of water such as Lake Erie in early winter. (The cold, dry air picks up the lake moisture and deposits it, in the form of snow, over land … especially over us because we live in the snowbelt. (This is a North American region, much of which lies downwind of the Great Lakes, where heavy snowfall is particularly common on predominately eastern and southern shores of the Great Lakes.)
In earlier times, people tended to talk about specific snow events. So, Geaugans in the early 1900s were more likely to talk about the Knickerbocker Storm than a clipper. This storm was a blizzard that occurred Jan. 2728, 1922, in the upper South and middle Atlantic United States. The storm got its name from the collapse of the Knickerbocker Theater in Washington, D.C., shortly after 9 p.m. on Jan. 28. This theater was the largest and newest movie house in Washington, D.C., at that time. The roof was flat, which allowed the heavy snow that had recently fallen to remain on the roof. The weight of the heavy, wet snow became too much for the roof to bear. It split down the middle, bringing down the balcony seating as well as a portion of the brick wall, killing 98 people and injuring many more.
For information on the events at the Geauga County Historical Society’s Century Village Museum, call 440-834-1492 or visit our website at www.geaugahistorical.org.
