WBUR staffers share their most lasting memories from Boston's infamously snowy winter of 2015

Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from WBUR's Saturday morning newsletter, The Weekender. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here. 

Ten years ago today, New Englanders were securing their bread and milk in anticipation of a snowstorm. Heavy snow was in the forecast, but what we didn’t know then was that this storm would be the first in a series of snowstorms that locals would remember for years to come.

The blizzard dropped 24.4 inches of snow on Boston, which served as a frosty base for another four weeks of historic snowfall. The final totals were record breaking: We received a whopping 110.3 inches of snow by winter's end. And it took until July for the last of it to melt.

You really had to be there to fully understand what it was like living in Boston that winter. But since time machines don’t exist yet, I asked my colleagues to take a quick trip down memory lane to help me paint a picture of local life during the 2015 Snowmageddon. Here’s what they recall from that wicked, weird winter.

Editor's note: Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

“In Eastie, it's just the sidewalk and then the street. So there was nowhere to really put the snow. It accumulated fast. I remember it felt like you were in a snow fort, walking through a tunnel as tall as you. I lived up on Jeffries’ Point, so I had to walk down to Airport station every day. And if you wanted to cross the street, you had to look out around the snow pile and then run — because there was no way to see if cars were coming or not!”— Dixie Ledesma, associate director of donor strategy and data

“As a resident in the Fenway, the neighborhood landmarks offered helpful reference points, but navigating the narrowly carved passageways on foot in-between chest-height snow piles through intersections was like a maze with secret ankle-deep puddles as a bonus.” — Steven Davy, CitySpace senior producer and director

“I was in my first year of college at Emerson. Getting from where I was living in Little Building, which is right on the corner, [involved] a lot of slipping and sliding and very carefully not falling on my butt.

There was a very sporadic snowball fight at 11 or 12 at night once the Common. We were walking back from getting dinner, just walking around, trying to stay out of the dorms for a little while. Then, one of my buddies quietly made a snowball without any of us knowing and chucked it — after that, it was just a mass snowball fight between seven people. It was hilarious.” — Cody Gelsinger, assistant chief engineer

“I remember for the first few weeks, I was excited to have a perpetual long weekend and had stocked up on hot cocoa (and wine). By mid-February, it was getting old. My walk to the grocery store, usually an easy 10 minutes, became half an hour navigating a crevasse in the sidewalk uphill. But when it really hit was when the Green Line stopped being able to run above ground. No amount of bundling up prepared me for walking three miles home in that blizzard. I ended up ducking into my gym, at about the 2-mile mark, just to sit in the lobby and get some feeling back in my fingers.

"I also met a Malamute who lived up the street during this. By mid-February when we were all miserable, that pup was the happiest dog I've ever seen, climbing up the snow banks and jumping up to say hi. Usually he had very good manners but he was so excited.” — Courtney Keller, legacy giving manager

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"During the winter of Snowmageddon, my twin girls had just turned 1, and my family lived in on a busy street in Belmont. My husband, Sam, grew up in Minnesota and he swore we wouldn't need a snowblower — he said shoveling "what little snow we'd get" would be "character-building." He regretted those words once the storms kept coming and the piles at the end of our driveway grew taller than his 6-foot-2 frame!" — Cloe Axelson, senior editor for Cognoscenti

“I feel like every Monday for a month, we’d get a blizzard. I was working in higher ed, so there was a big, “will it or won't it” in terms of classes, and we got into this kind of snow day rhythm. I had a very in-person, in-office job at that time — five days a week in the office. My commute was a walk to a bus and then a walk, and even though it was about almost an hour walk and it was freezing, I started walking instead of waiting for the bus, because better to walk in the cold than to wait for the bus and the bus comes and it's full.” — Eva Rosenberg, festival booker

“The big thing about that winter was the endless shoveling. I mean, people were getting shoulder injuries and stuff because it was just constant.

"I remember walking down from my house in Roslindale, to the village. There's no cars, no one's driving. People were cross country skiing on the streets.  People were really friendly and chitchatting outside. And the only people you could find downtown were the guy running the corner store and someone working in the bakery. But it was just endless shoveling.” — Beth Healy, deputy managing editor

“Well, I was here during the blizzard of ‘78. I grew up in Cambridge. That was like one big deposit, just like, thump! There you go!

"The one that happened in 2015… it snowed a bit, and was cold, and a couple days later it’d snow a bit again, without any melting. So it kept on getting built up, built up, built up. And transportation was at nil! I was working at ‘BUR and it took me an hour and forty minutes to walk home to the South End.”— René Marchando, broadcast recording technician

“My dislike of winter is epic. So in 2015 — when the snow started to fall and then just would not stop — oy vey. I lost count of the indignities. I have exactly one significant hobby, which is photography, but I hardly used my camera in this stretch because I needed to conserve my energy to expend on being a grump.

Eventually, though, I realized something. As long as we're experiencing a fluffy white impediment to my own personal joy, we need to EMERGE VICTORIOUS. Why cope with relentless winter unless we rip the meteorological record books to shreds? I started actually rooting for more of my sworn enemy. And thus, with this newfound and ill-advised goal, I was rewarded. Come March, we took the podium with the gold for the snowiest season ever recorded in Boston. In your face, other years! I mean, a win is a win.” — Sharon Brody, news host

P.S. — In a reminiscent mood? Scroll through the surreal photos that WBUR photographers captured during that snowy stretch here and here and here and here.