![\"Shoveling](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/reg-l-snowstorm1996-01.jpg\")
Shoveling out on Walnut Street in Carlisle following the great nor’easter of Jan. 6 and 7, 1996. (Courtesy of the Henshaw family)<\/p>\nYou may remember the \u201cBlizzard of 1996.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t \u2014 perhaps you were too young or not born yet \u2014 there has been no shortage of media reminders marking the great storm, which was technically a nor\u2019easter, that swept through the region 30 years ago this week.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s about as close to a slam-dunk story as TV news ever gets, with dramatic footage of what was billed as the storm of the half-century.<\/p>\n
Berks County was among the hardest-hit areas, with nearly 3 feet of snow measured in places during the Jan. 6\u20137 storm. At the time, I lived about 80 miles southwest of Reading, in Carlisle, Cumberland County. We got a similar amount.<\/p>\n
I lived on Walnut Street, which \u2014 like the Walnut Street in Reading \u2014 features row homes and on-street parking. It was not designed to handle mountains of snow.<\/p>\n
Also like Reading, Carlisle\u2019s Walnut Street led directly to the town\u2019s only hospital. Volunteer drivers with Jeep Wranglers and pickup trucks were sought to transport hospital staff after the governor\u2019s emergency declaration banned all nonessential travel.<\/p>\n
So many details of the storm and its immediate aftermath are murkier now than the view from my front window on Jan. 6, 1996, as fine white crystals fell relentlessly until our cars were completely buried.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a little frustrating. I can instantly tell you how many homers Lenny Dykstra and Darren Daulton hit in 1993, but I wouldn\u2019t testify under oath about what I did in the days after the snow stopped.<\/p>\n
Shoveling out on Walnut Street in Carlisle following the great nor’easter of Jan. 6 and 7, 1996. (Courtesy of the Henshaw family)<\/p>\n
I think I walked across town to the newspaper office to join the few staff members who weren\u2019t snowbound. Journalists, along with emergency personnel, were exempt from the travel ban.<\/p>\n
So much of the 1990s has blurred now that we\u2019re halfway through the 2020s. I remember plenty of humorous anecdotes from working at the Carlisle paper, but I can\u2019t recall the stories that earned me statewide awards.<\/p>\n
Memories fade unless they\u2019re refreshed every so often. I lost touch with nearly everyone in Carlisle, and there\u2019s little reason to return.<\/p>\n
Back then, there was no Facebook to resurface occasional flashbacks \u2014 a photo or post from five or 10 years ago deemed worthy of resurrection.<\/p>\n
Preparing this column sent me to a hallway closet, thumbing through bulky hardcover photo albums. A few images didn\u2019t help much: neighbors and me digging out cars, snow piled wherever a vehicle hadn\u2019t been parked.<\/p>\n
Strangely, what I remember best came two weeks later.<\/p>\n
A sudden warmup and more precipitation spelled disaster across Cumberland County and the greater Harrisburg metro area as the massive snow mountains rapidly melted.<\/p>\n
Then, on Jan. 20, large chunks of ice floating down the swollen Susquehanna River took out a section of Walnut Street Bridge \u2014 a wrought-iron truss bridge linking downtown Harrisburg to Cumberland County\u2019s West Shore.<\/p>\n
A day, and an image, that\u2019s hard to forget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You may remember the \u201cBlizzard of 1996.\u201d If you don\u2019t \u2014 perhaps you were too young or not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,139,1559,1560,28,128,130,129,706,1133],"class_list":{"0":"post-82536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-berks-county","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-opinion","11":"tag-opinion-columnists","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-reading-city","14":"tag-reading-city-headlines","15":"tag-reading-city-news","16":"tag-top-stories-reg","17":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}