Where were you in ’ 72?

On Monday I warned you of frost. On Tuesday I mentioned that there might be a few flurries behind Friday’s cold front. Many of you reacted to that one with a chorus of: “flurries Cindy, it’s May”! Well any year we get through May with only flurries is a good year, but it doesn’t happen very often. May has been known to serve up a few beauties. If you’re old enough to remember 1972 or someone in your family wisely saved photos, you know all about May 1972. In fact it was May 10th, this very date in 1972 when a powerful May storm barreled across the region, setting all kinds of snowfall records in Atlantic Canada. Janine Angela Musolino Sanford reached out to me via Facebook and posted the amazing photo montage you see. It’s is a picture from her family photo album. In it, you’ll find her grandparents Harold and Iris Johnson, and in the bottom left photo her great grandfather Gerald A Hatter shovelling snow on May 10, 1972 at the corner of Isleville and Stairs Pl in the Hydrostone in Halifax, N. S. Halifax came out on top – of the snow bank perhaps – with a whopping 27 cm of snow. Sydney followed closely behind with 25 cm. Parts of the Annapolis Valley were shovelling out from under close to 20 cm that day. It also snowed across Newfoundland and Labrador but the totals were not quite as impressive: 14 cm for St John’s and 12 cm for Corner Brook. Still more than most would expect on May 10th! Over on Prince Edward Island, residents were spared; there was not even enough snow to whiten the ground. May was snowy and cold but that’s only part of the story: 1972 the only year on record when all weather- reporting stations in Canada reported temperatures below normal on an annual basis. One for the record books and the scrapbooks! Cindy Day is SaltWire Network’s chief meteorologist