h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's inappropriate to complain about snowstorms during the Winter. That's something you've got to expect in Winter.

The Fates seem unimaginably cruel when they throw snow at you after Winter is over. I remember one year when we got more than 18 inches of snow on April Fool's Day . Because many trees had started moving sap up through their trunks, they were less rigid, and the heavy weight of snow sometimes caused trunks or branches to snap. There's a private school in Dedham [a Boston suburb] that had a lovely row of evergreen trees. heavy snow on the topmost branches caused every one of them to lean over and snap. Such total damage is rare most years.

I knew a married couple who came to the Boston area from Syracuse, a city in upstate new York State. A huge storm track rolls across that area from Lake Erie through the Albany/Schenectady/Troy area and on through the Berkshire Hills to Worcester and ultimately Boston. The couple told me that you could occasionally be celebrating the Fourth of July and see snow flakes start falling. They would soon melt, of course, but seeing them would be enough to make you wonder .

The worst year for snow in the Northeast U.S.was probably 1816, the year after a massive volcano in the South Pacific erupted, pushing sun-blocking ash particles into the atmosphere globally. `1816 was known familiarly as "Eighteen Hundred and Froze to death." There was snow in every month of the year.