The Blizzard of ′78: The front page that readers never saw
Just after midnight on Tuesday morning, February 7, 1978, as the Great Blizzard howled outside The Boston Globe building on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester, I was feeling frustrated and looking for a place to sleep. I had just come upstairs from the composing room, where the printers had finished work on a revised Page One, and there was nobody in sight throughout the newsroom. I was the junior Page One editor and had rejiggered the page to enlarge the main photo and to add news too late to have been included in the first edition. It looks pretty good now, I thought, but my work had been in vain. The top Globe executives had decided to stop the press run after a few thousand papers of the first edition had been printed. Globe trucks couldn’t get more than a mile or so from the building because of the drifting snow, which had started falling at midday. The storm continued throughout Tuesday, dumping more than 2 feet of snow on top of the more than 2 feet that had fallen 17 days before. Winds exceeded 80 miles per hour, major highways were barely plowed, most of the MBTA was shut down. Governor Dukakis told everyone to stay put, and yet the Globe resumed publication on Wednesday morning.
—Condensed from Thomas Gagen’s remembrance “The Night We Stopped the Presses,” published in 2008.
The art of the “weather ear”
For more than seven decades, wordplay has been in the forecast for Globe readers. The “weather ear” headline, named for its former placement at a top corner of the front page, blends puns, jokes, cultural references, and nods to current events to give readers a smile while telling them what kind of day to expect. The crafting of the ear has had generations of Globe editors relishing the opportunity to make their anonymous mark. Some classics:
Uncle: A timely cry amid the Blizzard of ‘78
My T fine: The day after a public transit disruption, an assurance of a good outlook on all fronts
Gimme swelter: This ear caught the attention of Jeopardy! writers, who turned it into a clue on the popular quiz show. (Correct response was, “Who are the Rolling Stones?”)
Getting thirties ardor: The work of a copy desk chief whose custom was never to explain his ears. This one had most of his crew spending their dinner break trying to figure out the reference. (Hint to readers: Think of 1920s Broadway titles, or 1940s slapstick movies.)
Same auld, same auld: A current Globe editor dug deep to sum up the dreary weather at the start of 2022 without relying on devices used in new years past. With such dedication, the weather ear tradition will never grow old.
— Charles F. Mansbach, retired page-one editor
Remember our 2015 winter of ice dams?
Horrible ice, collapsed roofs, and worse descended on this region in 2015. A selection of stories from the time:
February 19: “I’ve never seen anything like what we’ve seen in Boston,” the owner of an ice-dam removal company told reporter Laura Crimaldi.
February 21: “Add another hazard to the collection of winter dangers facing New Englanders,” Steve Annear wrote. Massive icicles, now “crashing to the ground.”
February 25: “[A]s far as insurance companies are concerned, [this year] has been all about ice dams,” wrote Deirdre Fernandes. An “army of exhausted insurance” reps struggled to keep up.
A reminder from Carol Stocker that spring will come, it always does
“Spring is a rumor in New England these days. The rumor spreads through the stale air of sealed offices. It is carried home in shopping bags with those first strands of asparagus. It is shouted at apartment walls that have been closing in for weeks like trash compactors,” wrote gardening grande dame Carol Stocker in March 1981. “Spring is a river that fills in the low lands first, like water seeking its level. It works its way north, appearing first in swamps and then, fortunately for Boston, along the low lying coastal areas. From there, the river of spring rises slowly upland, climbing 100 feet a day into the mountains.”