It was a Friday morning that felt like a Sunday. The roads and stores went quiet, and the region seemed hungover from the binge that it had gone on the night before, in the mad rush to prepare for the blizzard.

We had been told it will be our worst winter storm in a while, one that has forecasters throwing around words like “historic,” and the rush had started Thursday night. People prepared to live off the grid for a couple days. Everywhere, there was a run on staples. And by Friday morning, as the snow began to fall, the Walmart in Peabody was long out of milk and fuel for camping stoves.