A Look Back: Plenty of snowstorms and steady cold snaps in winters of yore

Jia Wang, left, and Feifei Chu, who are both graduate students in physics at Dartmouth College, walk along College Street in Hanover, N.H., during a snow flurry on Dec. 12, 2005. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck)

Jia Wang, left, and Feifei Chu, who are both graduate students in physics at Dartmouth College, walk along College Street in Hanover, N.H., during a snow flurry on Dec. 12, 2005. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Valley News - Jennifer Hauck

Traffic wends its way down Main Street in a snowstorm in White River Junction, Vt., circa. 1968. (Valley News photograph)

Traffic wends its way down Main Street in a snowstorm in White River Junction, Vt., circa. 1968. (Valley News photograph) Valley News photograph

Take the hint and

Take the hint and "don't walk" too far. The going will be rough for a few days to come -- even if there's no more snow after the several feet that fell in West Lebanon, N.H., on Dec. 28, 1969. (Valley News - Larry McDonald) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Valley News - Larry McDonald

Republican presidential candidate Nelson Rockefeller rides a snow machine for the press while campaigning in the Upper Valley in 1964. (Valley News - Larry McDonald)
<p><i>Copyright © Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.</i></p>
Republican presidential candidate Nelson Rockefeller rides a snow machine for the press while campaigning in Lyme in 1964.Valley News — Larry McDonald

Republican presidential candidate Nelson Rockefeller rides a snow machine for the press while campaigning in the Upper Valley in 1964. (Valley News - Larry McDonald)

Copyright © Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.

Republican presidential candidate Nelson Rockefeller rides a snow machine for the press while campaigning in Lyme in 1964.Valley News — Larry McDonald Valley News — Larry McDonald

"I'm not going anywhere today," said Craig Hewett while smoking a cigarette and considering whether to shovel the front steps of his Bethel, Vt., home on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011. (Valley News - James M. Patterson) Valley News — James M. Patterson

Jessica Noble, of Sharon, Vt., helps her fiance Jon Honkala to move trailers out of the snow at his towing business in Sharon on Thursday, March 13, 2014. Honkala said he measured 26 inches of snowfall at his home after the recent storm. (Valley News - James M. Patterson)

Jessica Noble, of Sharon, Vt., helps her fiance Jon Honkala to move trailers out of the snow at his towing business in Sharon on Thursday, March 13, 2014. Honkala said he measured 26 inches of snowfall at his home after the recent storm. (Valley News - James M. Patterson) James M. Patterson

On Oct. 25, 2005, a van flipped over in the northbound lane of Interstate 89 between the Purmort and Montcalm exits. The responding New Hampshire State Police trooper said it was the sixth accident they had responded to in a three-hour time span. Precipitation was predominantly rain both north and south of this stretch of interstate, but here, it came down as heavy snow. (Valley News - Alexander L. Cohn)

On Oct. 25, 2005, a van flipped over in the northbound lane of Interstate 89 between the Purmort and Montcalm exits. The responding New Hampshire State Police trooper said it was the sixth accident they had responded to in a three-hour time span. Precipitation was predominantly rain both north and south of this stretch of interstate, but here, it came down as heavy snow. (Valley News - Alexander L. Cohn) Alex Cohn


Floyd Richardson's 1931 Ford Model A is flanked by snow banks while traveling from high school to the family farm in Hartland, Vt., in a circa 1935 photograph. (Courtesy Gordon Richardson)

Floyd Richardson's 1931 Ford Model A is flanked by snow banks while traveling from high school to the family farm in Hartland, Vt., in a circa 1935 photograph. (Courtesy Gordon Richardson) Courtesy Gordon Richardson

By STEVE TAYLOR

For the Valley News

Published: 02-02-2025 4:02 PM

Modified: 02-04-2025 11:06 PM


Doug Carver, principal of Lebanon’s Hanover Street elementary school, heard crackling noises coming from beneath the roof of the adjacent high school gymnasium. He immediately went into overdrive, telling pupils and teachers to grab their outdoor clothing and get out of the complex as fast as they could.

Within minutes, the entire grade and high school student population had evacuated and was herded a safe distance across the sprawling parking lot where they watched as fire trucks and an ambulance converged on the scene.

About 45 minutes elapsed before the entire roof collapsed into the gymnasium with a mighty roar. The date was Friday, Jan. 16, 1970, a time that remains etched in the memory of the hundreds of youngsters who saw the calamity unfold. Even though wild rumors had immediately started flying about trapped victims, nobody was hurt.

The cause was a simple one: The snow load on the flat roof exceeded its design strength and the supporting wood and steel beams buckled and gave way.

Collapsing roofs were a fairly common occurrence that winter; the season was typical for the Upper Valley in the 1960s and early 1970s, with plenty of snowstorms and steady cold snaps.

Three weeks before the school roof disaster, there had been a six-day stretch between Christmas and New Year’s when a lingering storm dumped as much as three feet of snow on the region, followed by a slight warming trend that brought a heavy coating of sleet-caused ice. There was already close to two feet of snow on the ground before the big storm hit, so when a persistent cold pattern set in, accumulated snow and crust stayed put.

Now, a half century-plus later, when bare ground at midwinter is common and subzero temperatures are rare, folks who lived around here back then are happy to relate stories of how it was when winter meant winter and people got so they were quite adept at dealing with it.

“February 1969 was the worst I can remember,” said Doug Miller, a lifelong farmer in Bradford, Vt., and Haverhill. “The drifts were huge. There were some girls from a farm in North Haverhill who finally got to school by walking on the crust that was on top of the snow covering the stone walls along the roadside.”

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“I remember snow as high as the roof on my porch. A logger came by, he had a Case bulldozer, and it took all morning for him to clean out the farmyard for me. In January 1961, it was below zero every morning for quite a stretch. The moisture in the cow stable froze the doors shut and we had to pry them open. That was life on the farm.”

Another farmer, Larry Taylor in Orford, tells stories of snowdrifts on Dame Hill so big the town plow couldn’t get through them, necessitating bringing in a large bucket loader to open them up. “Those drifts were about 12 feet high,” he recalled.

Taylor once did a stint in the cab of a town truck plowing snow, and he offers sympathy for those who handle the duties today. He also notes the growing difficulty for towns to get drivers to run the plow trucks. “They’ve got to have a CDL (commercial driver’s license), and that can cost them $5,000 or $7,000 for the school. Then right off, they can get more money driving for a contractor or trucking company and the town has to try again,” Taylor said.

It’s easy to blame global warming and climate change for the sharp differences between today and the early 1970s. Records kept by a number of diarists in the Upper Valley clearly indicate the decline of annual snowfall or, more important, the length of time there is snow cover on the ground. And these amateur weather observers consistently record milder temperatures and fewer cold snaps.

Doug Miller will accept these findings, but he thinks comparisons should extend over a 100-year time span at least before any findings can be considered conclusive.

Probably of greater interest (and amusement) is how Upper Valley folks dealt with lots more snow and colder temperatures back in the day.

Driving down a town road with steep snowbanks on either side could be akin to driving in a canyon. Many drivers affixed colored tennis balls or ribbons atop their car antennas so a vehicle approaching from the intersecting driveway or street could see another car on the other side of the snowbank.

Four-wheel drive was almost an oddity, having been introduced initially in Willys jeeps after World War II and later becoming a costly option on pickup trucks. Snow tires were crude by today’s standards, and many people resorted to tire chains for safe travel on snowy and icy surfaces, even though chains were a royal pain to put on and frequently broke, causing a loud whack-whack noise on adjacent fenders.

There still were pre-1955 vehicles on the road with their six-volt electrical systems that made cold-weather starting a roll of the dice. Road salt had become the norm for paved roads, and all vehicles were on track for rusting out.

Snowmobiles were catching on all over the Upper Valley in the mid-1960s. Cross country skiing was picking up adherents, and ski areas were figuring out how to better manage slopes for skier pleasure. There were many more ski areas in New Hampshire and Vermont, though many like Ascutney Mountain Resort would eventually perish because of unreliable snowcover.

Home insulation was an irregular proposition, and many houses would sport icicles hanging from the eaves and often — horror of horrors — ice dams that suggested water leaking down walls inside. Enumeration of the way winter was then could go on and on.

That Lebanon High gymnasium roof collapse would become a topic for discussion for decades to come and how the school’s powerhouse boys basketball team’s season played out with no home court for practice and games.

Two nights before the roof failed, Lebanon had a home game against cross-river rival Hartford. It was a golden age for high school sports in the Upper Valley, when schools competed against neighbors on either side of the river rather than having to take long drives to far-off towns to satisfy rigid within-the-state-only restrictions.

Jim Vanier and Chuck Currier were members of the Lebanon team, and today they love to recount how things went after they lost their home court.

“Hartford, then Dartmouth, let us practice in their facilities at first,” Vanier, long a fixture in Lebanon youth sports, said, “and then it was at Dartmouth for all practice and games. As the season went on, Dartmouth gymnasium was like our home.”

The night of the roof collapse, players gathered at Terry Cantlin’s house and wondered how their season would go forward. But with Dartmouth’s and Hartford’s help they enjoyed a great run, ending when they lost in the state division final to Littleton, which was stocked with top talent, including future Kansas City Royals starting pitcher Rich Gale.

The most memorable part of the season, Currier said, was the game at Dartmouth gym when Lebanon squared off against next-door rival Hanover.

“The place was absolutely packed. Some said 1,500; somebody else said 2,500. Whatever, it was the biggest crowd ever to see these two schools go at it in basketball, I’m sure,” said Currier, now a real estate investor in Florida and the Upper Valley.

And Currier added another interesting fact: “They never called off school due to weather in those days, ever.”

Steve Taylor has lived through 85 Upper Valley winters. He resides in Meriden and contributes occasionally to the Valley News.